Life of Moses (31)

October 14, 2018

Maybe I’m weird, but I often read the obituaries in the newspaper. It’s interesting to read what family members say about the departed loved one. What are they remembered for? Usually, it’s their relationships with family and friends, their careers, and their favorite activities and hobbies. But, it’s also sobering to read obituaries, because someday someone will write mine. What will I be remembered for?

Once in California, my phone rang and a woman on the other end asked, “Father Cole?” I replied, “Well, I am a father and my name is Cole, but are you looking for the Catholic priest?” I offered to get his number, but she asked, “Well, you’re a reverend, aren’t you?” I said, “I’m the pastor of a church here.” She replied, “That will do.” She then explained that her father had died and she was looking for someone to conduct the funeral.

I met with her and two of her siblings. In the course of talking about the funeral service, I shared the gospel with them. Even though I had not said anything about their father, the woman who had called me grew very agitated and blurted out, “Are you saying that our dad is in hell?” I replied that I did not know their father or where he stood with the Lord. I was only trying to let them know what the Bible says about how any person can spend eternity in heaven with the Lord.

At the funeral the three of them got up and read a eulogy about “we remember dad.” They recalled, “We remember dad going to the bar and buying a round of drinks for all his buddies. He loved going to the bar! We remember dad going to the market and flirting with all the cute young checkers.” Basically, they fondly remembered dad as a dirty-minded old drunk! Then I got up and preached the gospel! My associate sitting at the back was trying to suppress his laughter at the disparity of the situation!

But the important question is not how you want your family and friends to remember you, but rather, “What would God say if He wrote your obituary?” In our text, we have the obituary that God wrote about Moses. It was added sometime after his death (v. 10). But since all Scripture is inspired by God, we know that God wrote this obituary about this great prophet. The lesson for us is:

Since we all will stand before God, we need to live with His obituary for our lives constantly in view.

What will the Lord say? Will He say, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:21)? Will He shake His head and say, “Your work is in the bonfire, but by My grace, come on into heaven” (1 Cor. 3:15)? Or, will He utter those terrible words (Matt. 7:23), “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness”? God’s obituary on Moses teaches us four lessons:

1. Since we all will die (unless Jesus returns before then), we need to live with eternity in view.

Last week we looked at what Moses knew about God. God spoke with him face to face in a manner that He didn’t speak with anyone else, even with other prophets (Num. 12:6-8). So Moses knew God in a unique way. But when it comes to the end and we read God’s obituary, it doesn’t emphasize Moses’ knowledge of God, but rather God’s knowledge of Moses (Deut. 34:10), “whom the Lord knew face to face.” (This insight is from P. C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy [Eerdmans], p. 406.) That parallels in reverse the Lord’s terrible words to those who claimed to know Him and do miracles in His name (Matt. 7:23), “I never knew you.” The crucial question is not, “Do you claim to know God, but rather, does God know you?” (See, also, 1 Cor. 8:3; Gal. 4:9.)

You may think, “Doesn’t God know everyone? After all, He’s omniscient!” True, but God’s knowing you refers to His foreknowing you as one of His chosen ones (Matt. 22:1-14). As Paul wrote (Rom. 8:29-30), “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.” God’s foreknowledge does not mean that He knew in advance that you would choose Him. Rather, it means that He chose to know you before you existed.

Now maybe you’re thinking, “Oh, great! What if God didn’t choose me? What if He didn’t predestine me to eternal life?” But the Bible never teaches the doctrine of predestination to discourage or prevent anyone from coming to Christ. The Bible ends by inviting all to come to Jesus (Rev. 22:17). Jesus gave a wonderful, open invitation to every weary soul (Matt. 11:28), “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”

But have you ever thought about the verse just before? Jesus said (Matt. 11:27), “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.” And it’s clear from the context (Matt. 11:17-26) that Jesus does not will to reveal the Father to everyone. Rather, He reveals the Father to those whom the Father has granted such knowledge (Matt. 13:11-17; John 6:65; Phil. 1:29).

So, the vital question is, “How can I know that God knows me?” The biblical answer is, “Have you come to Jesus for salvation? Have you trusted in His shed blood to cover all your sins?” If you’ve done that, it wasn’t because of your wise choice or superior intellect. It was because the Father chose you and Jesus willed to reveal Him to you. If God was pleased to reveal the glory of Christ to you (2 Cor. 4:4-6; Gal. 1:15-16), then you should seek to live the rest of your life with a view to giving an account to Him someday soon (Rom. 14:10-12; 2 Cor. 5:9-10).

Moses was unique in that he was God’s man to found the nation of Israel and give them His laws. But few have such important roles in God’s kingdom. For the average Israelite, it was enough to love God and obey His commandments (Deut. 10:12-13): “Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the Lord’s commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today for your good?”

In the church, there are a few great leaders like Paul, but for most of us, loving God, loving others (beginning at home), living and serving faithfully in God’s church, and bearing witness as He gives opportunity is what He requires. To do this, God must be central in our daily lives. Spend time each day with Him. Walk with Him. It’s a battle because other things invariably crowd in, but keep fighting for a God-ward perspective. Live in view of the fact that God will write your obituary. What do you want Him to say?

2. We can take comfort in the fact that God is sovereign over the time and manner of our deaths.

Because of Moses’ sin in striking the rock to bring forth water, rather than speaking to the rock, God determined that he would not bring Israel into the Promised Land (Num. 20:12). He reminded Moses of this more than once. Even though Moses pleaded with the Lord to let him cross over into the land, He refused, although He did allow him to go on the mountain and view the land from a distance (Num. 27:12-20; Deut. 3:23-28). So now the time had come. God told Moses to go up on the mountain where he could view the land. Then he would die there (Deut. 32:48-52).

God is sovereign over when and how we die. He has arranged the very day (Ps. 139:16). Even if we die alone, we’re not alone, because the Lord is with us, just as he was with Moses on that mountain. Some may get an advanced warning, when the doctor says, “You’ve probably got six months to live.” But for others, the time is completely unexpected. None of us is guaranteed even to be alive tomorrow. Years ago in California I mentioned this in a sermon. An older couple were there who had moved away but were back visiting. That afternoon as they returned home, a man swerved across the line and hit them head-on. The wife was killed instantly and the husband was permanently disabled. I conducted her funeral service. Our daughter and son-in-law know a young missionary couple where recently the husband was out playing soccer and unexpectedly died.

With Moses, even though he was 120, his death was not due to physical infirmity, but rather to God’s word to him (Deut. 34:5, 7). He went up the mountain knowing that he was to die, but he went calmly by faith in God’s grace. John Calvin observed (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], 3:404), “Such willing submission proceeded from no other source than faith in God’s grace, whereby alone all terror is mitigated, and set at rest, and the bitterness of death is sweetened.” If your faith is in God’s grace to you in Christ, then you can face the day of your death with calm assurance.

3. Even the greatest of leaders may die with disappointments and unanswered prayers.

In spite of his failure in striking the rock at Meribah, Moses was still “the servant of the Lord” (Deut. 34:5). God’s hand was still on His servant, but His holiness demanded that Moses’ sin result in this severe consequence of not leading Israel into the land. It taught all Israel that God is holy and is to be treated as holy. Even the greatest leaders do not get a free pass.

In fact, the sins of leaders often are met with more severe consequences than those of others. Those who teach God’s Word will incur a stricter judgment (James 3:1). When David sinned with Bathsheba, God forgave his sin, but He did not relent regarding the death of the baby that was conceived, even though David humbled himself and fasted for a week. And God brought other severe consequences on David’s family because of his sin (2 Sam. 12:10-18).

At first, Moses entreated the Lord to let him cross over into the land (Deut. 3:23-25). But when the Lord told Moses (Deut. 3:26), “Enough! Speak to Me no more of this matter,” Moses submitted to God’s discipline. At that point, his concern was for the people. He asked the Lord to appoint a successor and the Lord directed him to appoint Joshua (Num. 27:12-23). But the Lord graciously allowed Moses to go up on the mountain and get this view of the Promised Land. Even though Moses was 120, God graciously gave him the strength to climb this high mountain (without a walker!) and the eyesight to see the distant horizons of the land (without eyeglasses!) (Deut. 34:4, 7).

Was this a supernatural vision of the land? It seems impossible for Moses to have seen physically everything mentioned (Deut. 34:1-3). The mountains around Jerusalem to the west would have blocked a view of the Mediterranean Sea (“the western sea”). Perhaps it was a spiritual vision, comparable to Satan showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their glory from the top of a high mountain (Matt. 4:8). Or, the text may be using hyperbole.

But as Moses gazed at the land from that mountaintop, he must have had a “sense of accomplishment mixed with disappointment” (Earl Kalland, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], ed. by Frank Gaebelein, 3:234). He had seen God use him to lead these descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob out of centuries of cruel slavery in Egypt. He had seen God part the Red Sea to let Israel cross, and he saw that sea come back on top of Israel’s enemy. He had seen daily manna, water from the rock, and quail to feed this vast multitude in that barren desert. The cloud protected them by day and the fiery pillar at night. God had given Moses the Ten Commandments plus many other laws to govern these people; the pattern for the tabernacle; the sacrificial system; and the leadership organizational structure for the new nation. Yet in spite of all these accomplishments, Moses probably felt disappointed that he would not be taking Israel into their promised inheritance.

In Psalm 90, after lamenting how our brief lives are like grass that sprouts in the morning, but withers by evening, and how Israel in the wilderness had been consumed by God’s anger, Moses prays (Ps. 90:17),

“Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us;
And confirm for us the work of our hands;
Yes, confirm the work of our hands.”

If a great leader like Moses had to pray that prayer, how much more do we! The longer I’ve been a pastor, the more I’m aware of my many shortcomings. I wrestle with prayers that have not been answered as I wanted. I confess that many times I have not prayed as often or as fervently as I should. There have been many disappointments along the way, as people I’ve cared about have left the church or, even worse, fallen away from the Lord. If you’re serving the Lord, you’ve had disappointments and unanswered prayers, too. But God is still gracious to give us a glimpse of the land. We know that Jesus is coming and that His kingdom will triumph and endure forever!

Moses had two unfulfilled prayers: (1) “Show me Your glory” (Exod. 33:18); and, “Let me cross over and see the fair land” (Deut. 3:25). But by God’s grace, both were eventually answered. On the Mount of Transfiguration Moses along with Elijah saw Jesus in His glory and he stood in the land (James Hamilton, Moses, the Man of God: A Course of Lectures [Kessinger Publishing], p. 379). We may die with disappointments and unanswered prayers, but the glory of Christ and the blessings of heaven will more than make up for all our disappointments.

Thus God’s obituary of Moses teaches us that since we will die, we should live with eternity in view. We can take comfort in God’s sovereignty over the time and manner of our deaths. And, even the greatest leaders die with disappointments and unanswered prayers.

4. Although even the greatest leaders will die, God’s program goes on unabated.

Al Mohler (The Conviction to Lead [Bethany House], p. 203) tells the story of an old preacher who told a group of younger preachers to remember that they would die. “They are going to put you in a box,” he said, “and put the box in the ground, and throw dirt on your face, and then go back to the church and eat potato salad.” That’s a blunt way to put it, but it’s a healthy reminder: I’m going to die, but God’s work will go on just fine without me!

Here, God reminds Moses of His covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give Israel the land of Canaan (Deut. 34:4). God will be faithful to His promise. His program will not end with Moses. Earlier, when Moses had asked God to appoint a man as his successor so that the people would not be like sheep without a shepherd, God had said (Num. 27:18), “Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him.” Deuteronomy 34:9 reminds us that Moses had laid his hands on Joshua, who “was filled with the spirit of wisdom.”

The point is, leaders come and go, but God’s Spirit is eternal. He is the main factor in good leadership and fruitful ministry. Moses died, but the same Spirit who empowered him and gave him wisdom was in Joshua. The two men had different gifts and no one after Moses measured up to him in terms of knowing God face to face and performing the mighty miracles that God did through him (Deut. 34:10-12). But God used Joshua to lead Israel in the conquest of Canaan. Even though after Joshua, Israel floundered through the distressing days of the judges, eventually the Lord raised up a descendant of Rahab, the harlot in Jericho who was saved by her faith, namely, King David (Matt. 1:5-6).

While after David there were times when God’s kingdom through Israel hung by a thread or was even exiled in Babylon, eventually the Son of David, Jesus the Messiah, was born. He is the prophet whom Moses predicted that God would raise up after him (Deut. 18:15-18). Whereas Moses was faithful as a servant in God’s house, Christ was faithful as a Son over His house (Heb. 3:5-6). Although the history of Christ’s church has seen heretics depart from the faith and lead many astray and martyrs be slaughtered by evil men, we can be assured that one day soon we will hear the angel in heaven proclaim (Rev. 11:15), “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever.”

Deuteronomy 34:6 reads, “And He buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor; but no man knows his burial place to this day.” Some commentators say that God may have used men to bury Moses, but I think the fact that no man knows his burial place argues that God Himself buried Moses. Or, He may have sent the archangel Michael to bury him. Jude 9 mysteriously comments, “But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you!’” There is no other reference to this in Scripture, but it may be that God sent Michael to bury Moses, but Satan demanded Moses’ body, leading to Michael’s pronouncing the Lord’s rebuke on him.

This is similar to Zechariah 3:1-5, where Satan accused Joshua the high priest before the angel of the Lord, but the Lord rebuked Satan, removed Joshua’s filthy garments, and clothed him with a clean robe and turban. So some think that when Moses died, Satan demanded his body, accusing him of being a murderer when he killed the Egyptian taskmaster. But Michael rebuked Satan because God had forgiven Moses by His grace. Believers can be assured that (Rom. 8:1) “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Or, perhaps Satan wanted Moses’ body so he could set up a shrine where Israel would fall into idolatry, much like Roman Catholics and the Orthodox Church venerate relics. But God does not want His people to worship any human leader, except for the God-man, Jesus Christ.

Note, that even though Israel often complained against Moses and accused him of trying to kill them in the wilderness, when he died they mourned for him 30 days (v. 8). We often don’t realize our blessings until they are taken from us. Let your loved ones know that you love and appreciate them while you have the opportunity. But then the days of mourning for Moses ended. There is a time to end grieving and move on.

Conclusion

God’s obituary of this great prophet Moses should make us think often about what He will say someday about us. In the 1980’s, I read an interview with Jerry Falwell (in Christianity Today, I think, but I can’t locate the exact source). At the time, Falwell was the pastor of a 20,000-member church. He was the founder and president of Liberty University. He was also the founder and president of The Moral Majority, which was impacting American politics. Although I was not a fan of Falwell, anyone had to admit that he was famous and successful as few leaders are.

But my esteem for Falwell shot up when I read his reply to the interviewer’s question, “What would you like to be remembered for?” Falwell said (as I recall), “I want to be remembered as a godly husband to my wife, a godly father to my children, and a godly pastor to Christ’s church.” I thought, “He nailed it! He hasn’t let his fame go to his head!”

What do you want to be remembered for? Whatever our gifts and calling, the life of Moses the servant of the Lord should motivate us to want God to say in our obituary, “He (or she) was My faithful servant!”

Application Questions

1. What are some practical ways to maintain a God-ward focus in the hustle and bustle of daily life?
2. Does God’s sovereignty over the time of your death (and others’ deaths) bring you comfort? Why/why not?
3. What disappointments and unanswered prayers do you have regarding your service for the Lord? How can you process these so that they don’t discourage you?
4. Write a one-sentence summary of what you want God to write for your obituary. Set some practical goals in light of this.

Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

Preface

How to relate the Christian worldview to a non-Christian world has been the dilemma of Christian spokespersons since the apostle Paul addressed the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers in Athens. Twenty centuries of experience have not simplified this task, as new challenges have arisen in every century and new methods and approaches to defending the Christian faith have been formulated in response.

In this introductory textbook on Christian apologetics—the study of the defense of the faith—you will be inducted into this two-millennia-long discussion. You will overhear the greatest apologists of all time responding to the intellectual attacks on the Bible in their day. You will take a guided tour of the four major approaches to apologetics that have emerged in the past couple of centuries. Along the way you will pick up insightful answers to such questions as:

• Why is belief in God rational despite the prevalence of evil in the world?
• What facts support the church’s testimony that Jesus rose from the dead?
• Can we be certain Christianity is true?
• How can our faith in Christ be based on something more secure than our own understanding without descending into an irrational emotionalism?

At least formal differences in theory and method have sharply distinguished leading Christian apologists. At the same time, many apologists draw on a variety of methods and do not fit neatly into a single ‘cookie-cutter’ theory of how to defend the Christian faith. In this book, we will identify four ‘approaches’ or idealized types of Christian apologetic methodologies. We will look at the actual apologetic arguments of leading apologists and see how their methods compare to those idealized approaches. We will then consider the work of apologists who have advocated directly integrating two or more of these four basic approaches. Our goal is to contribute toward an understanding of these different apologetic methods that will enrich all Christians in their defense of the faith and enable them to speak with clearer and more relevant voices to our present day and beyond.

Sarah and Murali

While apologetics as an intellectual discipline seeks to develop answers to questions that at times may seem abstract, ultimately its purpose is to facilitate bringing real people into a relationship with the living and true God. In this book we will illustrate how the various apologetic methods would be applied in conversations with two very different hypothetical individuals: Sarah and Murali.

Sarah is a college sophomore pursuing a degree in psychology at a state university. Raised in a conservative Protestant home, she began to question the faith of her childhood in high school, as Christianity increasingly seemed a harsh and uncaring religion to her. In her first year at the university she took introductory courses in philosophy, psychology, and English literature that cast doubt on Christian beliefs and values. Her philosophy professor especially had gone out of his way to ridicule “fundamentalism” and had attacked the Christian worldview at its root. Sarah found the “problem of evil”—the question of why a good, all-powerful God would allow so much evil in his world—to be an especially strong argument against Christianity. She was also exposed to theories of biblical criticism that denied the historical accuracy of the Bible and reinterpreted the biblical miracles as myths. When she went home for the summer after her first year at State, Sarah was a self-confessed skeptic.

Murali came to the United States from India to attend medical school and ended up staying and establishing a practice there. Although he was raised as a Hindu and still respects his family’s religion, Murali is not particularly devout. Troubled by the centuries of conflict in the Indian subcontinent between Hindus and Muslims, he has concluded that all religions are basically good and none should be regarded as superior to another. Absolute claims in religion strike him as both unprovable and intolerant, and he resents efforts by both Muslims and Christians to convert him or his family to their beliefs. Although religions speak about God and adherents experience the transcendent in different ways, he believes it is all really the same thing. When Muslims or Christians attempt to convince him that their religion is the truth, Murali asks why God has allowed so many different religions to flourish if only one of them is acceptable to God.

Throughout this book we will periodically ask how a skilled and astute advocate of a particular approach to apologetics would respond to Sarah and Murali. In this way we will see how the various apologetic methods can be applied in concrete situations. We will see their weaknesses as well as their strengths. This will help us think through how the different apologetic methods may be integrated to greater effectiveness in defending the faith.

Fundamental to apologetics is answering questions commonly raised by non-Christians about the truth of Christianity. While many such questions are broached in this book, we will concentrate on those that are basic and crucial to the validity of the Christian faith. These questions are part of the unbelieving stance typified by our model non-Christians, Sarah and Murali. Those questions are the following:

1. Why should we believe in the Bible?

2. Don’t all religions lead to God?

3. How do we know that God exists?

4. If God does exist, why does he permit evil?

5. Aren’t the miracles of the Bible spiritual myths or legends and not literal fact?

6. Why should I believe what Christians claim about Jesus?

Tom, Joe, Cal, and Martina

In this book we will be analyzing four basic approaches to apologetics. Again, these are idealized types; when we consider the apologetic work of actual Christian apologists we find that there are actually many more than four approaches. However, most of the methods that Christians use in apologetics are closely related to one of these four basic approaches. We might think of them as ‘families’ of apologetic approaches, with those classified in the same type as sharing certain ‘family resemblances’ with one another. Membership in one family does not preclude some resemblances to another family. Our analysis of apologetic approaches into these four types closely parallels that found in other surveys of major types of apologetics, though with some minor differences (see the Appendix.)

What distinguishes these four basic approaches to apologetics? To put the matter as simply as possible, each places a distinctive priority on reason, fact, revelation, and faith respectively. In our illustrations with Sarah and Murali, we will also present four Christians utilizing the four approaches in an astute, representative manner. For reasons that will become clear by the end of Part One, we call these four apologists Tom (after Thomas Aquinas, a thirteenth-century theologian), Joe (after Joseph Butler, an eighteenth-century Anglican bishop), Cal (after John Calvin, the sixteenth-century French Reformer), and Martina (after Martin Luther, the sixteenth-century German Reformer). Tom’s apologetic approach places a strong emphasis on logic, and is called classical apologetics. Joe’s approach emphasizes facts or evidences, and is called evidentialism. Cal’s approach emphasizes the authority of God’s revelation in Scripture; because of its close identification with Calvinist or Reformed theology, this approach is here called Reformed apologetics. Finally, Martina’s approach emphasizes the need for personal faith and is referred to here as fideism (from the Latin fide, “faith”). These are differences in emphasis or priority, since apologists favoring one approach over another generally allow some role for reason, facts, revelation, and faith. (Even fideism, which is typically suspicious of apologetic argument, offers a kind of apologetics that uses reason and fact.)

The four approaches diverge on apologetic method or theory regarding the following six questions, all of which will be discussed in this book in relation to each of the four views:

1. 1. On what basis do we claim that Christianity is the truth?

2. 2. What is the relationship between apologetics and theology?

3. 3. Should apologetics engage in a philosophical defense of the Christian faith?

4. 4. Can science be used to defend the Christian faith?

5. 5. Can the Christian faith be supported by historical inquiry?

6. 6. How is our knowledge of Christian truth related to our experience?

Although each approach answers these questions in different ways, those answers are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In practice, many apologists do not fit neatly into one of the four categories because they draw somewhat from two or even more approaches to answer these questions about apologetics. We see this as a healthy tendency. In fact, we will argue that all four approaches have value and should be integrated together as much as possible.

The Plan of the Book

This book is divided into six parts. Part One introduces the subject of apologetics, and includes a review of the thought of leading apologists in church history and an overview of the four basic approaches to apologetics.

Parts Two through Five present parallel treatments of each of the four approaches. Each part is divided into four chapters. The first chapter of each part traces the roots of the apologetic approach and introduces the thought of five major apologists (chapters 4, 8, 12, and 16). These five apologists are associated with that approach or idealized type in different ways: some are precursors to that approach as it has emerged in modern times, some are advocates of a “pure” form of that approach, and some represent significant variations in that approach. The second chapter analyzes the method and its view of the six questions mentioned above concerning knowledge, theology, philosophy, science, history, and experience (5, 9, 13, and 17). The third chapter examines the method’s answers to the six questions about Scripture, other religions, God, evil, miracles, and Jesus (6, 10, 14, and 18). The fourth chapter of each part summarizes the method and illustrates it with a sample dialogue between our two fictional non-Christians and one of the four model Christian apologists (7, 11, 15, and 19). Each of these latter chapters also discusses the major strengths and weaknesses of the apologetic approach illustrated in the dialogue.

Finally, Part Six discusses ways to integrate the four basic approaches. Its structure closely parallels Parts Two through Five, and thus it begins with a chapter noting the precursors to an integrative strategy and introducing the thought of five modern apologists who have proposed or utilized such integrative systems (chapter 20). These five apologists integrate the four approaches in different ways, with one approach typically dominating to some extent. The next two chapters propose integrative strategies to understanding the relation of apologetics to theories of knowledge, theology, philosophy, science, history, and experience (21), and to answering the six questions concerning Scripture, other religions, God, evil, miracles, and Jesus (22). We are not here advocating a ‘fifth approach’ or offering an integrative system of our own to replace or supplant other apologetic systems. Rather, we are encouraging Christians to use whatever method or methods they find useful while enriching their defense of the faith by learning from apologists who favor other approaches. The final chapter makes the case for a plurality of apologetic methods in view of the differences among apologists and non-Christians, the different needs people have, and the different questions people ask (23). The following table shows the overall plan of the book from Part Two through Part Six.

This second edition of Faith Has Its Reasons has been thoroughly updated and in other respects revised. Wherever possible we have drawn on more recent publications of living apologists and made note of recent studies pertaining to apologists and apologetic issues. A number of reviewers of the first edition made some insightful criticisms that we have taken into consideration in this revision. It may be impossible, even in a book of this length, to treat such a vast array of thinkers and diversity of issues without simplifying and even omitting some significant aspects of the subject matter. We encourage you to use this book as an introduction to the field of apologetics—a handbook to your reading of the groundbreaking apologists of the past and the present.

We pray that this book will be useful in helping you to “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15).

While apologies or defenses of the Christian faith go all the way back to the first century, the formal science of apologetics is a more recent development. In this chapter we will survey the history of apologetics in three stages. First, we will discuss in some detail apologetics in the New Testament itself. Second, we will give detailed attention to the thought of the leading apologists prior to the Reformation, notably Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas. Third, we will present a more cursory overview of apologetics from the Reformation to the present.¹ In later chapters we will consider the apologetic thought of several modern Christian thinkers in more detail.

Apologetics in the New Testament

Although perhaps none of the New Testament writings should be classified as a formal apologetic treatise, most of them exhibit apologetic concerns.² The New Testament writers anticipate and answer objections and seek to demonstrate the credibility of the claims and credentials of Christ, focusing especially on the resurrection of Jesus as the historical foundation upon which Christianity is built. Many New Testament writings are occupied with polemics against false teachings, in which the apologetic concern is to defend the gospel against perversion from within the church.³

Apologetics in Luke-Acts

Of all the New Testament writings, the two volumes by Luke (his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles) are the most overtly apologetical in purpose.⁴ In his prologue (Luke 1:1-4) Luke announces that his work is based on careful historical research and will present an accurate record of the origins of Christianity. The very structure and content of this two-part work suggests it was written at least in part as a political apology for Paul: Acts ends with Paul under house arrest yet preaching freely in Rome, and both books emphasize that Jesus and the apostles (especially Paul) were law-abiding persons. In Acts the motif of Jesus’ resurrection as vindication, his fulfillment of Old Testament messianic prophecies, and the charismatic phenomena on and after the Day of Pentecost are used as cumulative evidences of the messianic lordship of Jesus (Acts 2:36) and of the authority of the apostolic truth claims. Along the way Luke uses the speeches of the apostles to present apologetic arguments to a wide variety of audiences, both Jewish and Gentile.

One of these speeches, Paul’s address to the Athenians in Acts 17, has been extraordinarily important in Christian reflections about apologetics throughout church history; it is the only substantial example of an apology directed to a non-Jewish audience in the New Testament (though see Acts 14:15-17). Thus this one speech has traditionally been regarded as a paradigm or model of apologetics.⁵

According to Luke (Acts 17:18), Paul’s message of Jesus and the Resurrection was misunderstood as teaching new deities. Luke reports this accusation in terms identical to those describing the Athenians’ charge against Socrates in Plato’s Apology, which strongly suggests that Luke sees Paul’s speech here as a Christian counterpart to the Socratic apology. Challenged to explain his position by Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, Paul set his message in a rational context in which it would make sense to his philosophically minded audience. The speech was quite unlike those Paul delivered to Jewish audiences, which emphasized Jesus as the fulfillment of Old Testament messianic promises and quoted Old Testament proof texts liberally. In fact, Paul used a form of speech recognized by the Greeks as a philosophical address, such as was commonly used by the Stoics and Cynics of his day.

Throughout the speech Paul speaks biblical truth but uses Stoic terms and argues in Stoic fashion, even quoting a Stoic poet in support of his argument (verses 24-29). Essentially, the point of this first and longest part of the speech is that idolatry is foolish and that the Stoics themselves have admitted as much, though they had failed to abandon it completely. Paul uses this inconsistency in Stoic philosophy to illustrate the Athenians’ ignorance of God (cf. verse 23). Having proved his major premise, Paul then announces that God has declared an end to ignorance of his nature and will by revealing himself. Paul concludes that the Resurrection is proof of God’s intention to judge the world through Jesus Christ (verses 30-31). This scandalized the Athenians (verse 32), in part because Greek thought generally found the idea of physical resurrection foolish, and in part because the idea of a final judgment was offensive to them.

The result of Paul’s apology was that some believed, some scoffed, and some expressed interest (verses 32-34). These reactions cover the three possible responses to the gospel, and the small numberof those who believed should not be taken to mean that Paul’s speech was a failure. Nor should 1 Corinthians 2:2 be taken to mean that Paul abandoned philosophical reasoning (as his use of Greek logic and rhetoric in 1 Corinthians 15 makes clear), but that he refused to avoid the central issue with the Corinthians even though it was scandalous to them. Thus Christian apologists are right to view Paul’s speech to the Athenians as a model of Christian apology.

Apologetics in Paul’s Writings

Closely related to Paul’s thought in his Athenian address is his argument in Romans 1. Paul takes over Hellenistic Jewish apologetics here on the folly of Gentile culture (chapter 1, first half of chapter 2), then argues that the Jews are not above the same sins as the Gentiles (second half of chapter 2). Along the way he sets forth some notions about the knowledge of God that have been extremely important for apologetics.⁶ According to Paul, God’s existence and divinity are clearly revealed in nature. All human beings, he says, “knew God,” but they suppressed the truth, refusing to acknowledge God and falling into idolatry instead (1:18-25).

The statement that people “knew God” (verse 21) has been understood in two ways. (1) It may mean that all people once knew God but don’t any longer. The past tense of the verb certainly allows for this interpretation, and in support it may be noted that Paul elsewhere consistently says that the Gentiles do not know God (besides Acts 17:23, see 1 Corinthians 1:21; Galatians 4:8; 1 Thessalonians 4:5; 2 Thessalonians 1:8; Titus 1:16). (2) It may mean that all people in some limited sense know God but refuse to worship him properly. In support of this view, it has been pointed out that the godless must know something about God to be able to “suppress” the truth about him and refuse to “acknowledge” him (Romans 1:18, 28). In other words, since the suppression continues, so must the knowledge being suppressed.⁷ These two views can be reconciled. The true knowledge of God—in which one knows God, not merely knows that there is a God of some kind—was once had by all people, but no longer. All human beings continue to know that there is a God and continue to be confronted with internal and external evidence for his deity, but generally speaking they suppress or subvert this knowledge into idolatrous religion of varying kinds.

Paul’s letters elsewhere repeatedly deal with apologetic issues that arose as both Jews and pagans who had confessed Christ and become associated with the churches Paul had founded developed radically different interpretations of the meaning of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 1–2 Paul warned the Corinthian believers against trying to accommodate the gospel to the wisdom of the Greeks. Paul is not advocating a kind of anti-intellectualism. Christianity promotes a true wisdom that mature Christians find intellectually superior to anything the world can produce, one based on God’s revelation rather than human speculation (1 Corinthians 1:18-21; 2:6-16).⁸ In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul refuted errors about the resurrection of the dead by reminding the Corinthians that the resurrection of Christ was a historical fact (verses 3-11). Paul argues that the heretics—who deny our future resurrection—are inconsistent if they affirm Jesus’ resurrection since, if he was raised, we can be too. They are also inconsistent if they do not affirm Jesus’ resurrection since, if Jesus was not raised, there is no point to their affirming faith in Jesus at all (verses 12-19). This is a classic model of apologetic argument, locking opponents of gospel truths in a logical dilemma.⁹

In his epistle to the Colossians, Paul refuted errors about Christ’s person that arose apparently from a religious context in which unbiblical Jewish and Greek ideas were mixed with an acknowledgment, however inadequate, of Jesus Christ. In this context Paul condemns not philosophy per se, but manmade philosophies that are not “according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8). Paul boldly co-opted Greek religious terms such as plērōma, a term used to denote the “fullness” of the divine beings that inhabited the cosmos, to convey Christian ideas—in this case, the idea that all deity dwelled in Christ (2:9).

Apologetics in John’s Writings

The apostle John followed a strategy similar to Paul’s adoption of Greek philosophical and religious terms in his Gospel, in which the preincarnate Christ is called the Logos (“Word,” John 1:1, 14; cf. 1 John 1:1). The notion of a preexistent Word involved in God’s creation of the universe had Old Testament associations (for example, Genesis 1:3, etc.; Psalm 33:6, 9). Still, to any Gentile or Hellenistic Jewish reader the term Logos would have immediately conjured up Platonic and Stoic notions of the universal Reason that was believed to govern the cosmos and was thought to be reflected in the rational mind of every human being (cf. John 1:9). Yet the announcement by John that this Logos was personal—that he was God’s Son (verses 1, 14, 18; cf. 20:31) and had become incarnate (1:14)—was shocking to both Jews and Greeks. It required a completely new way of looking at God and humanity to believe that Jesus was the divine Logos incarnate.¹⁰

The Apologetic Mandate in 1 Peter 3:15

Our survey of New Testament apologetics would not be complete without taking notice of 1 Peter 3:15, which has often been regarded as the classic biblical statement of the mandate for Christians to engage in apologetics.¹¹ Peter instructs believers to “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense [apologia] to every one who asks you to give an account [logos] for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.” Three key observations should be made about this text.

First, Peter is definitely instructing believers to make a reasoned defense of their beliefs. Logos (the same word used in John 1:1 to refer to the preexistent Christ) is a very flexible word, but in this context it clearly refers to a rational explanation or account. The word apologia, while not meaning “apologetics” in the modern technical sense, does indicate that Christians are to make the best case they can for their confession of Jesus Christ as Lord.

Second, this apologetic mandate is given generally to all Christians, requiring them to give reasons for faith in Christ to anyone who asks for them. In the context Peter is specifically urging believers to be ready to do this when threatened with suffering for their faith (see 1 Peter 3:13-14, 16-17), but there is no basis for limiting the mandate to such situations. The language is quite general (“always . . . to every one who asks you”) and makes the apologetic mandate a standing order for the church.

Third, Peter instructs us to engage in apologetics with proper attitudes toward both the non-Christians with whom we are speaking and the Lord about whom we are speaking: “with gentleness and reverence.” The term “gentleness” indicates the manner in which we are to answer those who challenge our faith (again, in context this includes both “seekers” and those who are antagonistic to the Christian message). The term “reverence” (phobos, almost always translated “fear”) is translated “respect” in some versions, and this is often understood as referring to respect toward the people to whom we are speaking. However, Peter has just said we are not to show phobos toward people (3:14), and elsewhere says we are to show phobos toward God (1:17; 2:17). Almost certainly, then, Peter is telling us to conduct our defense of the faith with an attitude of holy fear or reverence toward Christ, whom we honor as Lord (3:15). We do so by striving to be faithful to Christ both in what we say and in how we live (verse 16).

The Early Church Fathers

In the postapostolic era, the new challenges that confronted the burgeoning church as it spread throughout the Roman Empire required a new apologetic counterthrust. Rabbinic Judaism, fully developed Gnosticism, persecuting paganism, and Hellenistic culture and philosophy all opposed the fledgling church. The religious apologists defended Christianity against these attacks and sought to gain converts to the faith by arguing for the superiority of the Christian position. There were also political apologists who argued that the church should be tolerated by the state.

The apologists of the second century¹² modeled their arguments after contemporary philosophical refutations of polytheism and the critiques of pagan philosophy by Hellenistic Jews. Of the many apologists from this period, the most important by far was Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165),¹³ a convert to Christianity from Platonism. In his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, Justin used messianic prophecies from the Hebrew Scriptures to prove that Jesus is the Messiah. In his two Apologies he appealed for the civil toleration of Christianity and argued that it was in fact the true philosophy. To show that Christianity should be tolerated, he refuted common errors and rumors (for example, that Christians were atheists and that they ate flesh and drank blood) and presented Christianity as a morally superior religion. To support his claim that it was the true philosophy, Justin made the first attempt in postbiblical history to correlate John’s doctrine of the Logos with Greek philosophy, arguing that Christianity was superior to Platonism and that any truth in Plato was actually plagiarized from Moses. Arguably, Justin’s doctrine was less than consistently biblical, notably in his strongly subordinationist view of Christ. However, his efforts were commendable given his place in Christian history (even before the process of collecting the New Testament canon was completed) and in view of his role as a pioneer in Christian theologizing and apologetics.

The third-century Alexandrians “continued to assimilate arguments from Platonic and Stoic philosophers as well as Jewish controversialists.”¹⁴ Clement of Alexandria wrote a number of theological discourses and an apologetic work called Protrepticus, a more sophisticated and persuasive work than those of the second-century apologists. By far the most important Greek apologist of the third century was Origen (ca. 185-254),¹⁵ whose lengthy Contra Celsum (“Against Celsus”) was a reply to Celsus’s philosophical, ethical, and historical criticisms of Christianity. In it, for example, Origen argued that Jesus did not do his miracles by sorcery, offered an impressive historical defense of Jesus’ resurrection against an early hallucination theory and other objections, and showed that the miracle stories of paganism are far less credible than those of the Gospels.¹⁶ It is with good reason that Origen’s book has been ranked as one of the classics of apologetics.¹⁷

Augustine

In the fourth and fifth centuries, pagan religions were on the wane and Christianity was on the ascendancy throughout the empire, particularly after the edict of Constantine in 313. Christian apologists, both Latin and Greek, wrote with pride of the progress and life-changing effects of Christianity. They also became more systematic in their presentation of Christianity as a worldview in contrast to competing philosophies, notably Neoplatonism.

The greatest apologist and theologian of this period and indeed of the first millennium of Christian history was, by nearly everyone’s reckoning, Aurelius Augustine (354-430), the bishop of Hippo, whose apologetic and theological writings ranged widely over the areas of human culture, philosophy, and history.¹⁸ Augustine was won to the Christian faith after trying Manicheism, a dualistic philosophy that viewed both good and evil as ultimate realities, and Platonism, which convinced him that Manicheism was false and so, by his own testimony, helped him on the path to Christianity. His earlier apologetic works, not surprisingly, were in large part devoted to refuting Manichean philosophy (On the Catholic and Manichean Ways of Life, Of True Religion, On the Usefulness of Belief).

As Augustine became more involved in church life, his apologetic works became more diversified. Over the course of his life he wrote numerous works championing Christianity over paganism, refuting heresies plaguing the church, and expounding Christian truth in a positive manner in teaching manuals and in sermons for the edification of Christians. An original and multigifted writer, thinker, and scholar, Augustine was able to develop an apologetic that was built on a stronger metaphysical or worldview base. While his worldview was at first heavily Platonic, as he matured his theology and philosophy became significantly less Platonic and more and more biblical. Specifically, Augustine became the first Christian theologian and apologist to embrace a thoroughly Pauline view of faith and of God’s sovereignty in salvation and in human history. This Pauline theology, in turn, enabled him to develop the first philosophically sophisticated, biblically sound, and comprehensive Christian view of the world and of history. Such a Christian philosophy was necessary to combat pagan philosophies, including Platonism, the philosophy he considered closest to Christianity. All such philosophies were corrupt and incapable of bringing people to God. Augustine’s Christian philosophy was expounded most fully in one of his last works, The City of God, widely regarded as one of the five or ten most important books in the history of Western thought.¹⁹

Augustine’s teaching on apologetical issues has inspired apologists and theologians from his day to the present. In his approach, faith and reason are interactive in coming to know the true God in Jesus Christ. Reason precedes faith in that a rational mind and recognition of the truth of what is to be believed must exist if we are to believe anything.²⁰ But faith precedes reason in that the truths of the Christian faith are in large part unseen—not only is God invisible, but the redemptive acts of God in Jesus Christ occurred in the past and cannot be directly witnessed. Because these truths cannot be seen, they must be accepted on the authority of God’s revelation as given in Scripture and witnessed by the church.²¹ These truths can then be understood as the believer comes to appreciate their significance from the inside. “For understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that thou mayest understand.”²² Augustine, then, was the first apologist to enunciate the principle of believing in order to understand, or faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum), but for him it was only one side of the coin. He frequently expressed this interactive or interdependent view of faith and reason in such statements as “For faith is understanding’s step; and understanding faith’s attainment.”²³ Moreover, he emphasized (in his later writings) that both faith and reason are enabled by God’s grace. He declared that “no one is sufficient for himself, either to begin or to perfect faith; but our sufficiency is of God.”²⁴

This does not mean that non-Christians know nothing about God. Augustine cited Romans 1:20 to show that some philosophers, especially Platonists, have been able from the creation to recognize the fact of a Creator God. The line of reasoning by which even pagans can be made to admit a Creator is essentially what philosophers would later call a cosmological argument, reasoning from the changeableness of all things in the world (Greek cosmos) to the existence of an unmade Maker of all things. This was one of a number of arguments by which Augustine reasoned that knowledge of God was available to pagans.²⁵ But this knowledge cannot prevent them from falling into idolatry and polytheism.²⁶ The true worship of God can be found only by placing faith in Jesus Christ.

Such faith is not a groundless faith: “they are much deceived, who think that we believe in Christ without any proofs concerning Christ.”²⁷ Augustine wove the proofs he found compelling into an apologetic consisting of a number of strands. These proofs included fulfilled prophecy, the consistent monotheistic faith and worship of the church, the miracles of the Bible, and especially the “miracle” of the massive conversion of much of Roman society to faith in a crucified God even when such faith brought martyrdom.²⁸

Anselm

By the seventh century Christianity had absorbed Greco-Roman culture and triumphed in its struggle against paganism. The church was the central vehicle of Western culture, and its apologists during the Middle Ages directed their efforts in three directions—toward unconverted Judaism, the threat of Islam, and the rational ground for belief.²⁹ Two Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages who stand out for their contributions to apologetics, and whose works continue to be read and debated today, were Anselm and Thomas Aquinas.

Anselm (1033-1109), the bishop of Canterbury, was one of the most creative and original philosophers the Christian church has ever produced.³⁰ He emphasized the side of Augustine’s view of faith and reason that viewed faith as prior to reason or understanding. “For I do not seek to understand in order to believe but I believe in order to understand [credo ut intelligam].”³¹ Although his philosophical arguments are often treated simply as rationalistic proofs designed to convince atheists, for him they were expressions of the search for understanding of one who already believed. On the other hand, he did intend at least some of his arguments as proofs to answer unbelievers and to confront them with the truth, as we shall see.

The most famous by far of these philosophical arguments has come to be known as the ontological argument,³² the development of which in Anselm’s Proslogion was a groundbreaking effort in apologetics. The essence of the argument is that the notion of a being of unsurpassable greatness is logically inescapable. From the idea of “that than which nothing greater can be thought,” Anselm inferred the existence or being (Greek ontos, hence “ontological” argument) of God.

The argument has been interpreted in several markedly divergent ways. Frequently it has been treated as a rational proof of the existence of God, and as such it has usually (but not always) been rejected by both Christian and non-Christian philosophers. Some philosophers have taken it to prove that if there is a God, he must be a necessary being (that is, a being that must exist, that cannot not exist) rather than a contingent being (one that might or might not have existed). Others have argued that it proves that necessary existence must be acknowledged for some being, either for the cosmos itself or for a being transcendent to the cosmos. Still others have offered radical reinterpretations of the argument. For example, Karl Barth took it to mean that God must reveal himself in order to be known. Charles Hartshorne reworked it to prove his “process” view that God is not the greatest possible being but is forever becoming a greater being and, in comparison to all others, is unsurpassably great. This bewildering diversity of interpretations of Anselm testifies to the provocative genius of his argument.

Anselm’s other major contribution to apologetics is found in his book Cur Deus Homo (“Why God became a man” or “Why the God-man”), in which he argued that God became a man because only God in his infinite being could provide an infinite satisfaction or atonement for man’s sin.³³ Anselm prefaced the work with the observation that the church’s teachers discussed “the rational basis of our faith . . . not only to confound the foolishness of believers and to break through their hardheartedness, but also in order to nourish those who, having hearts already cleansed by faith, delight in the rational basis of our faith—a rational basis for which we ought to hunger once [we have] the certainty of faith.”³⁴ The first part of the work “contains the answers of believers to the objections of unbelievers who repudiate the Christian faith because they regard it as incompatible with reason. And this book goes on to prove by rational necessity—Christ being removed from sight, as if there had never been anything known about Him—that no man can possibly be saved without Him.”³⁵ At the beginning of the book Anselm explained that he wrote it at the request of other believers. They asked for the book “not in order to approach faith by way of reason but in order to delight in the comprehension and contemplation of the doctrines which they believe, as well as in order to be ready, as best they can, always to give a satisfactory answer to everyone who asks of them a reason for the hope which is in us.”³⁶ Later Anselm pointed out that “although they [unbelievers] seek a rational basis because they do not believe whereas we seek it because we do believe, nevertheless it is one and the same thing that both we and they are seeking.”³⁷

These statements in Cur Deus Homo make it clear that Anselm did see his work as apologetic in purpose. While careful to disavow any intention of displacing faith as the basis of Christian certainty, Anselm did hope to offer reasoned arguments that would show unbelievers that Christian faith has a rational basis. Evidently he viewed these arguments as designed to render unbelievers without rational excuse and even to persuade them to accept the Christian faith. But while such arguments might help in bringing a person to faith, for Anselm such faith would have to be placed, not in his rational arguments, but in the God-man himself.

Thomas Aquinas

In the thirteenth century Christian Europe was shaken by the rediscovery and distribution of the philosophical works of Aristotle and the strong impetus given to the Aristotelian worldview by the very capable Spanish-Arab philosopher Averroes. The growing influence of Averroist thought in European universities led to a crisis for Christian thought. Some scholars at the universities were embracing an uncritical Aristotelianism, while others, especially high-ranking church officials, uncritically condemned anything Aristotelian. Albert the Great was one of the earliest philosophers to rise to this challenge, writing On the Unity of the Intellect against Averroes. But it was Albert’s disciple, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who would offer a response to this challenge that would change the course of Christian philosophy and apologetics.³⁸

Aquinas sought to combat the challenge of the Greco-Arabic worldview by creating a Christian philosophy utilizing Aristotelian categories and logic. In the Summa Contra Gentiles, he presented an apologetic directed primarily against Averroism but also offering a sweeping, comprehensive Christian philosophy in Aristotelian terms.³⁹ His Summa Theologiae was a systematic theology intended to instruct Christian students in theology; it is important for its opening apologetic sections and its theology of faith.⁴⁰

The view of faith and reason taken by Aquinas is often contrasted sharply with that of Augustine, but despite semantic and structural differences, their views are not very far apart. According to Aquinas, some truths about God are discoverable through reason or through faith, while others are discoverable only through faith. Yet even those truths discoverable through reason are commended to faith because our reason is finite, prone to error, clouded by sin, and always uncertain, while faith is absolutely reliable because it is founded on God’s revelation.

Aquinas is perhaps best known for his five ways, five arguments for the existence of God. These theistic arguments have been the subject of enormous debate for over two centuries.⁴¹ Aquinas himself did not put great emphasis on the five ways, which take up only a few pages in both Summas. According to Aquinas, that God (or, a God) exists is vaguely recognized by all; that it is God, however, is not universally recognized. God’s existence may be inferred from the nature of the world as changing, causative, contingent, graduated, and ordered (the five ways). These proofs (according to Aquinas himself) show that a God exists, but do not prove God per se; for Thomas, faith in God ought to be based on his revelation in Scripture, not on the proofs. The proofs were apparently offered not as a refutation of atheism (which was not a serious option in Aquinas’s day), but to show the coherence of Christianity with Aristotelianism.

Interestingly, Aquinas was himself a critic of certain types of theistic proofs. For example, he rejected Anselm’s ontological argument. Aquinas gave particular attention to arguments based on philosophical proofs against the eternity of the world. He concluded that philosophy could neither prove nor disprove the eternity of the world and therefore could not prove God’s existence from the fact of the world’s origination in time. Instead, he insisted, we believe that the world is not eternal because we know from God’s revelation in Scripture that the world was created by God.

Aquinas used the traditional evidences for Christianity in much the same fashion as Augustine, including the conversion of the masses, fulfilled prophecy, and miracles.⁴² He was careful to point out, though, that these arguments show that Christianity is plausible and can be used to refute objections, but cannot be used to prove Christianity to nonbelievers.

The Reformation

The primary concern of the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century was the doctrine of salvation. In their view the Aristotelianism of the Scholastics—the medieval theologians on whose teachings the sixteenth-century Roman Catholic system was based—had led to a confusion and perversion of the gospel of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Moreover, the Renaissance was marked by an infatuation with pagan antiquity, especially Plato and Neoplatonism, and the result was a further corruption of the Christian message in what came to be known as humanism. Originally humanism was essentially an intellectual approach to literature and learning, emphasizing the study of the classics (and of the Bible) directly instead of through medieval commentaries. By the sixteenth century, though, Catholic humanism (as represented, for instance, by Erasmus) was characterized by a man-centered philosophy emphasizing human dignity and freedom at the expense of the biblical teachings on sin and grace.⁴³

The doctrine of justification by faith in Jesus Christ alone was the heart and soul of the ministry of Martin Luther (1483-1546), the Augustinian monk who lit the torch of the Reformation with his Ninety-five Theses protesting legalistic abuses in the church.⁴⁴ In Luther’s estimation reason, particularly as employed in medieval theology, had obscured the gospel of justification. He therefore emphasized the limitations of reason and rejected the traditional theological project of employing logic and philosophy to explicate and defend the Christian faith.

Luther admitted that non-Christians can gain a “general” knowledge about God through reason, discerning that a God exists, that he is good and powerful, and the like. However, reason is incapable of helping them know who the true God is or how to be justified in his sight. Such “particular” knowledge is available only in the gospel, and can be appropriated only by faith. Not only is reason unhelpful in gaining a saving knowledge of God, it is actually an enemy of faith.

If Luther was the father and chief polemicist of the Reformation, John Calvin (1509-1564)⁴⁵ was arguably its chief theologian. His Institutes of the Christian Religion and biblical commentaries are still read and discussed today, even by nontheologians. As with Luther, Calvin’s principal apologetic labors were directed against Roman Catholic criticisms of the Reformation gospel.

Unlike Luther, Calvin held that faith is always reasonable. However, he also insisted that faith often seems unreasonable to us because our reason is blinded by sin and spiritual deception. Such blindness is evident in the philosophies of the pagans, which at times come close to recognizing the truth but in the end always distort the truth of God’s revelation of himself in nature. To remedy our spiritual blindness, God has given us his Word in Scripture, which is so much clearer and fuller in its revelation, and, through the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, God has also given us his Spirit, who enables us to understand his Word. Because God’s Word comes with his own divine, absolute authority, it cannot be subjected to our reasoning or tests. Faith needs no rational justification and is more certain than rationally justified knowledge, because it is based on God’s revelation in Scripture.

Apologetics Faces Skepticism

Until the post-Reformation period most Europeans took Christianity for granted, and the major religious debates were primarily intra-Christian disputes about the meaning of certain key doctrines of the faith. But the seventeenth century saw the rise of religious skepticism that challenged the very truth of the Christian faith. This skepticism led to new developments in apologetics. Some apologists responded to the rationalistic critiques of Christian doctrine by expressing a skepticism of their own—regarding the reliability of human reason—and proposing an approach to religion that emphasizes faith as a response of the heart. Other apologists accepted the rationalistic challenge and sought to answer it by proving that Christianity was just as rational as the conclusions of modern science.⁴⁶ These two approaches were typified by Blaise Pascal in the seventeenth century and Joseph Butler in the eighteenth century.

In his classic work Pensées (“Thoughts”), the French Catholic mathematician and apologist Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) rejected the traditional rational arguments for God’s existence and emphasized the personal, relational aspects involved in a non-Christian coming to faith in Jesus Christ. Pascal pointed out that some things that are clear to one group of people may be unclear or doubtful to another group. He was one of the first apologists to argue that apologetics should take into account the differences among people. Christians who would defend the faith must seek to show that it is not irrational, that it is great news if it is true, and that in fact it can be proved to be true.

Pascal sought to strike a balance between two extremes. He did not want to abandon reason altogether, but he also did not want its importance or value in knowing Christ to be exaggerated. God has given enough evidence of the truth of Christianity that those who want to know the truth will see it, but he has not shown himself in a way that would compel faith in those who don’t care or don’t want to believe. Pascal was especially concerned about those who don’t give serious thought to the issue. He urged them to realize that if Christianity is true and they fail to believe, they are in most serious danger.

Despite the eloquence and depth of Pascal’s “thoughts,” his approach to the defense of the faith was to remain a minority report. Natural science, through such giants as Galileo and Newton, achieved major breakthroughs during the seventeenth century and revolutionized our view of the world. In the wake of these developments, most apologists for the next three centuries understood the apologetic task as primarily one of showing the scientific credibility of the Christian faith. More broadly, apologetics became focused on providing empirical evidence, whether scientific or historical, in support of Christianity. Laying the groundwork for this empirical approach was John Locke (1632-1704), a British philosopher who developed one of the earliest formulations of empiricism.

The classic work of apologetics in an empirical mode was Joseph Butler’s book The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (1736). Butler (1692-1752), an Anglican bishop, sought to defuse objections to the orthodox Christian faith posed by deists, who favored a purely natural religion that was in principle available to all people in all times and places and that could be proved by reason. On this basis they came to question and finally reject the notion of a revealed religion that could not be rationally proved and was known only to those who had heard the revelation.

Butler argued, in response, that the intellectual difficulties found by deists in believing the Christian revelation have analogies in our knowledge of the natural world. In making this case he could assume as a given that God exists, since the deists agreed with this assumption. His use of analogies was not intended to prove either that God exists or that Christianity is true, but merely that it is not unreasonable to believe in the Christian revelation. This was the burden of almost the entirety of Butler’s book; only in a concluding chapter did he review the positive evidences for the truth of Christianity. Throughout his book Butler’s approach was empirical, focusing on facts and evidences, and the conclusions were couched in terms of probability. In taking this approach he sought to meet the deists on their own grounds, and he denied that he thought Christian faith should be based on the sorts of probabilistic arguments he was presenting.

The Rise of Modern Apologetics

Butler’s apologetic efforts in The Analogy of Religion were widely regarded as a worthy response to the natural religion of the deists. However, Christian apologetics was forced to reinvent itself with the advent of the Enlightenment.⁴⁷ The skepticism of the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) prepared the way for this movement, which rejected all revelation claims and all natural religion or natural theology, and declared the autonomy of human reason. Hume convinced many that the teleological or design argument, the argument from miracles, and other standard Christian apologetic arguments were unsound. The German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who reported having been awakened from his “dogmatic slumbers” by Hume’s writings, likewise critiqued the cosmological and ontological arguments for the existence of God.

These successive waves of attack on Christianity forced orthodox Christians to develop apologetic responses. Such responses varied depending on the theological convictions and philosophical temperament of the apologist as well as the content of the unbelieving attack.

One of the earliest apologists to respond to Hume was William Paley (1743-1805). Paley systematized the evidential arguments of this time in two works, A View of the Evidences of Christianity and Natural Theology. The latter work was a classic presentation of the teleological argument. He skillfully multiplied illustrations (most famously his illustration of the watch found in the desert, for which an intelligent maker must be posited) and arguments for design and for the evidential value of miracles. The force of his apologetic was severely weakened, though, by the rise of evolutionary biology in the late nineteenth century. Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) seemed to offer a naturalistic explanation for the order and diversity in life, encouraging many in the West to abandon belief in God as the Creator. Paley also defended the reliability of the New Testament writings. In the nineteenth century such historical apologetics, centering on the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and especially his resurrection, came to the fore with works by such apologists as Richard Whately and Simon Greenleaf.

An older contemporary of Paley was Thomas Reid (1710-1796), a Scottish Calvinist who developed a philosophy later known as Scottish Common-Sense Realism. Reid’s philosophy, like Paley’s, was in large part an answer to his fellow countryman Hume. Whereas Hume had been skeptical not only of miracles and the existence of God but also of cause-and-effect and of objective right and wrong, Reid held that our knowledge of all these things was simply a matter of common sense. Philosophers who question these things have let theory obscure the obvious. Our knowledge of cause and effect and right and wrong is self-evident and an incorrigible aspect of our constitution as created by God, whether we acknowledge God’s existence or not.

Reid’s epistemology (or theory of knowledge) was dominant at Princeton Theological Seminary in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The “Old Princetonians” affirmed that one could argue for the truth of the Christian revelation on the basis of certain “common sense” presuppositions about the nature of truth, reason, morality, and the world. Charles Hodge (1797-1878), the most famous Calvinist theologian at Old Princeton, maintained that although reason must submit to God’s revelation in Scripture, reason must first discern whether Scripture is indeed a revelation from God. The non-Christian must therefore be invited to use reason and “common sense” to evaluate the evidences (miracles, fulfilled prophecy, etc.) for Christianity. Hodge also maintained the validity of most of the traditional arguments for God’s existence, even recommending the works of Butler and Paley. B. B. Warfield (1851-1921), one of the last professors at Princeton before its reorganization and shift to liberal theology, continued Hodge’s apologetic approach. The thrust of Warfield’s apologetic was to argue against liberalism that a Christianity devoid of supernaturalism is, first, a Christianity that denies God, and second, really no Christianity at all.

In nineteenth-century Europe the efforts of Christian thinkers to defend Christian faith were directed largely against the philosophies of Kant and another German philosopher, Hegel. In Denmark the “melancholy Dane,” Søren Kierkegaard (1818-1855), strongly denounced both the cold confessional Lutheran orthodoxy and the abstract philosophical system of Hegel. Kierkegaard (pronounced KEER-kuh-gore) called on Christians to repent of their merely intellectual profession and to believe passionately and personally in Christ. His Philosophical Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript rejected the traditional theistic proofs and arguments for the deity of Christ on the grounds that a rational approach to Christianity ran afoul of the central paradox of Jesus Christ as God incarnate.

Somewhat later the Scottish theologian James Orr (1844-1913) responded to the Enlightenment challenge. He was one of the first apologists to present Christianity as a worldview, arguing that the weight of the evidence from various quarters supported the Christian view of God and the world.

In the Netherlands one of Orr’s contemporaries, the Calvinist theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), developed the notion of the antithesis. There is, said Kuyper, an absolute antithesis between the two sets of principles to which Christians and non-Christians are fundamentally committed (for example, God as sovereign versus man as autonomous). In short, Christians and non-Christians cannot see eye to eye on matters of fundamental principle. The non-Christian is incapable of verifying or testing the revelation of God in Scripture because, since Scripture is the Word of God, its teachings must be accepted as first principles or not at all. Therefore Christianity cannot be proved to the non-Christian on the basis of philosophical arguments or historical evidences, because these presuppose Christian principles. There can be no common or neutral ground between Christian and non-Christian. Thus, traditional apologetics must be abandoned. Negatively, Christian apologists should seek to expose the anti-Christian religious root of all non-Christian thought. Positively, they should attempt to model the truth of Christianity to the world by reconstructing society according to biblical principles.

Kuyper’s seminal ideas were developed into a full-fledged philosophy by others, among whom the best-known figure was Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977). According to Dooyeweerd, traditional apologetics, especially that of Thomas Aquinas, was based on an unbiblical dualism between nature and grace—between what can be known by the non-Christian by nature through reason alone and what can be known only by God’s gracious revelation through faith. The task of Christian philosophy is to commend the Christian worldview while exposing the inadequacy of all other worldviews to provide a secure footing for knowledge and ethics.

Another Christian thinker influenced by Kuyper was Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987), professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary. Van Til’s approach was essentially a creative synthesis of the Old Princetonian and Kuyperian philosophical-apologetical positions. He agreed with the Common-Sense Realist view taught at Old Princeton that sense perception, logic, moral values, and the like were guaranteed to us by God’s creating us and the world. He also agreed with Old Princeton that apologetics should offer proof for the Christian position. But Van Til integrated this position with the Kuyperian doctrine of the antithesis. Common-Sense Realism had held that non-Christians live in a God-created universe and thus operate on the basis of Christian presuppositions, whether they acknowledge that fact or not. For the Old Princetonians this meant that Christians might appeal to these shared presuppositions in traditional apologetic arguments. In Van Til’s thinking, however, the Kuyperian doctrine of the antithesis indicated that the non-Christian so suppresses these presuppositions when thinking about matters of principle that no argument appealing to them will connect.

For Van Til the great mistake of traditional apologetics was in using rationalistic arguments that concluded that the truths of Christianity are probably true. He thought such probabilistic arguments—which he claimed dominated apologetics since Butler’s Analogy—detracted from the certainty of faith and the absolute authority of Scripture as the written word of God. In place of such arguments, he urged Christian apologists to argue by presupposition. Such a presuppositional apologetic has two steps. The first is to show that non-Christian systems of thought are incapable of accounting for rationality and morality—to show that ultimately all non-Christian systems of thought fall into irrationalism. The second step is to commend the Christian view as giving the only possible presuppositional foundation for thought and life. For Van Til, such a presuppositional argument is the only legitimate apologetic method.

While Van Til was teaching his presuppositional version of Reformed apologetics in Philadelphia, on the other side of the Atlantic the most popular Christian apologist of the twentieth century was giving radio addresses in Britain and writing books. C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) was a scholar of medieval literature who converted to Christianity in midlife. His apologetic works included The Problem of Pain (on the problem of reconciling human suffering with an all-good God), The Screwtape Letters (from a senior devil instructing a junior devil in the art of temptation), Miracles (defending belief in miracles), and Mere Christianity (defending belief in God and Christ). Lewis insisted that Christianity was based on reasonable evidence, and that once a person had embraced the faith, the true attitude of faith was to believe despite such seeming evidence against Christianity as one’s personal suffering and losses. Among the most popular arguments he developed was the “trilemma” (as it was later called): since Jesus claimed to be God, one must either (1) reject him as a liar, (2) dismiss him as a lunatic, or (3) accept him as Lord. Since the first two alternatives contradict Christ’s evident sincerity and sanity, Lewis argued, we must conclude that he really is Lord. Lewis’s writings have had a tremendous influence on Christian apologetics. Among contemporary apologists most indebted to Lewis is the Roman Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, whose articulation of the gospel is surprisingly evangelical and whose philosophy is essentially Thomistic.

An older contemporary of C. S. Lewis who took a very different view of apologetics was the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968). While Lewis had converted from skepticism to Anglican Christianity, Barth had converted from German theological liberalism to a radically Christ-centered faith. Unable to swallow liberalism any longer and unwilling to go back to a premodern, conservative Protestant orthodoxy, Barth found it necessary to reconstruct Christian theology according to a new paradigm. His central and constant claim was that God is known only in Jesus Christ. On the basis of this premise, Barth rejected both liberalism, which thought it could find God in man’s own moral and spiritual sense, and fundamentalism, which, Barth argued (erroneously), treated the Bible as an end rather than as a means to knowing God in Christ. He also rejected natural theology, the project of trying to prove God from nature, for the same reason. According to Barth, apologetics as usually conceived is unfaithful to the principle that God can be known only through his self-revelation in Jesus Christ.

Conservative evangelicals generally have rejected Barth’s approach to theology and disagreed with his negative assessment of apologetics. However, some evangelicals who dissent from the belief in biblical inerrancy while maintaining an evangelical view of Christ and salvation have expressed appreciation for Barth, even while critiquing some of his views. Notable in this regard are Bernard Ramm and Donald Bloesch. Ramm, whose textbooks on apologetics were widely used in conservative evangelical circles in the 1960s and 1970s, in the 1980s argued that Barth’s theology, though needing some correction, provided a paradigm for avoiding the extremes of liberalism and fundamentalism. Bloesch, a systematic theologian, agrees with Barth’s criticisms of traditional apologetics but is more critical of his theology.

More conservative evangelical apologetics was dominated in the second half of the twentieth century by the debates over Van Til’s presuppositionalism. During the 1950s three American apologists offered three different answers to Van Til’s challenge to traditional apologetics. One was Gordon H. Clark (1902-1985), a Reformed philosopher whose emphasis on deductive logic led to a fierce debate with Van Til that divided the presuppositionalist movement. Clark maintained that the laws of logic and the propositions of Scripture provide the only reliable basis for knowledge. Clark’s most eminent disciple was Carl F. H. Henry (1913-2003), one of the leaders of the new evangelicalism represented by such institutions as Fuller Theological Seminary and the magazine Christianity Today.

The second major apologist of the 1950s was Edward John Carnell (1919-1967), another new evangelical, who was president of Fuller Seminary for much of the 1950s. Carnell’s books set forth a semi-presuppositional apologetic that approached Christianity as a hypothesis to be verified by showing that it alone is systematically consistent and practically livable. Like the presuppositionalists, Carnell rejected the traditional proofs for the existence of God. However, against the presuppositionalists he insisted that in the nature of the case apologetic arguments for the historical truth claims of Christianity, most notably the resurrection of Jesus, could only be based on probabilities. Carnell taught a generation of students, many of whom went on to become accomplished apologists themselves. Among these was Gordon Lewis, who defended a Carnellian approach to apologetics in his textbook Defending Christianity’s Truth Claims.

The third major apologist to emerge in the 1950s was Stuart Hackett. Unlike the apologists mentioned so far, Hackett was avowedly non-Calvinistic. He called for “the resurrection of theism” (in a book of that title) as a rational philosophical system, defended the traditional theistic proofs, and offered one of the first detailed critiques of Van Til. Whereas Dooyeweerd, Van Til, Clark, Carnell, and many other apologists agreed that Hume and Kant’s criticisms of traditional theistic proofs and evidential apologetics were valid, Hackett strenuously disagreed and in particular offered a head-on critique of Kant’s criticisms.

William Lane Craig, a student of Hackett, has published a number of major apologetic works in which he has moved from a position similar to Hackett’s to a more eclectic one. Craig’s writings are evenly divided between sophisticated defenses of the existence of God (based primarily on philosophical and scientific forms of the cosmological argument) and equally sophisticated historical and theological defenses of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Although his approach has strong affinities with evidentialism, in general his apologetic approach is best classified in the classical tradition.

In 1971 Jerusalem and Athens, a volume of essays in honor of Van Til, was published. It included several critical essays to which Van Til responded. Beginning with the publication of this book, at least two different ways of understanding and developing Van Til’s presuppositionalism have been defended. The first one (which actually predates Jerusalem and Athens) may be called the transcendental interpretation, and was articulated especially by Robert D. Knudsen (1924-2000), a former student of Van Til who became his colleague at Westminster, where he taught apologetics until 1995. According to Knudsen, Van Til’s apologetic is best understood as transcendental, that is, as one that presents Christianity as the only position that can give an adequate account of the possibility of truth, reason, value, and our existence. For Knudsen, Van Til’s apologetic was essentially Kuyperian, and Van Til should be regarded as a member of the school of the Calvinistic philosophy, along with Dooyeweerd and other Reformed thinkers.

The second interpretation of Van Til’s thought originated from John M. Frame, a student of Van Til who became a professor of apologetics at Westminster’s sister campus in California. Frame developed an epistemological theory he called perspectivalism that sought to integrate rational, empirical, and existential (or personal) aspects of human knowledge. In his 1987 book The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, Frame presented perspectivalism as a systematic refinement of Van Til’s position, giving more positive appreciation to logic and factual evidence while remaining true to Van Til’s vision of a thoroughly Reformed, presuppositional apologetic. Frame has also applied his perspectivalism to ethics, while his colleague Vern S. Poythress, a professor of New Testament at Westminster in Philadelphia, has applied perspectivalism to systematic theology and hermeneutics.

In the 1970s Van Til’s most notable critic was John Warwick Montgomery, a Lutheran apologist who contributed a satirical essay to Jerusalem and Athens entitled “Once upon an A Priori” that characterized Van Til’s position as abandoning all reasoned argument for the Christian faith. Montgomery, inspired especially by the nineteenth-century legal scholar and apologist Simon Greenleaf, contended for an “evidentialist,” empirically based apologetic that focused on the historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus based on principles of legal evidence. Evidentialists in Montgomery’s school of thought also generally accord more weight to scientific evidences for creation than to philosophical arguments for God’s existence. Numerous apologists today focus their efforts in an “evidential” direction, though without necessarily subscribing to a thoroughgoing evidentialist theory of apologetics. Such evidential apologists would include J. P. Moreland, who has made significant contributions to developing a Christian philosophy of science as well as defending the historical reliability of the Gospels. Another evangelical who favored an evidence-based apologetic and critiqued Van Til in Jerusalem and Athens was Clark Pinnock. In the 1980s and 1990s Pinnock, like Bernard Ramm, moved away from the conservative stance he had taken earlier, dissenting from biblical inerrancy and questioning other aspects of evangelical theology.

Also critical of Van Til was Norman Geisler, an evangelical scholar who argued for a classical apologetic based mainly on the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Although several Roman Catholic theologians, such as Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, have defended a Thomistic approach to apologetics and theology, Geisler has been one of the few contemporary evangelical Protestants to advocate such an approach. His approach involves three main stages of argument. First, he examines various limited theories of knowledge that attempt to base all knowledge solely in reason, or in empirical fact, or in experience and shows them to be inadequate. In place of such epistemologies, he defends the twin principles of unaffirmability (anything that cannot consistently be affirmed is false) and undeniability (anything that cannot be consistently denied is true) as providing a reliable and adequate test for truth. Second, Geisler examines all the major worldviews (including atheism, pantheism, etc.) and attempts to show that only theism (the monotheistic worldview common to traditional forms of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) passes the test of truth. A key aspect of this second stage is a reconstructed version of the Thomistic cosmological argument. Third, Geisler argues on probabilistic grounds that Christianity is the true form of theism. Here his argument focuses on the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the historical reliability of the biblical writings. His works have contributed greatly to evangelical apologetics and have been influential and appreciated even among those who do not accept his Thomistic method.

Another apologist who published apologetic works in the late 1960s and early 1970s was Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984). Like Van Til, Schaeffer emphasized the need to challenge non-Christian presuppositions, especially the relativism that became so prevalent in Western culture during the tumultuous 1960s. Also like Van Til, Schaeffer criticized apologetic arguments that were based on probabilities rather than certainties. Schaeffer, however, invited non-Christians to test the claims of Christianity to see if it is consistent and livable, making his apologetic in some respects more akin to Carnell’s than to Van Til’s.

During the same period Reformed philosopher Alvin Plantinga published his God and Other Minds. In this and other books Plantinga led the way in developing a school of thought known as the “new Reformed epistemology,” which was not influenced positively or negatively by Van Til. Plantinga argued that belief in God is rationally justified even if the believer cannot offer any evidence for that belief, just as we are rational to believe other things (notably in the existence of other minds) even if we cannot prove they exist. The focus of the new Reformed epistemology is on justifying belief rather than challenging unbelief. Yet its approach has some affinities with presuppositionalism, perhaps most notably its rejection of evidentialism (the claim that beliefs are rational only as they are justified by appeals to evidence). The school came into prominence in 1983 with the publication of Faith and Rationality, co-edited by Plantinga and Wolterstorff. The new Reformed epistemology and presuppositionalism are the two major varieties of Reformed apologetics today.

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, a number of apologists have attempted to integrate the subjective, existential perspective propounded by Kierkegaard into an essentially traditional apologetic; notable among these is the Christian philosopher C. Stephen Evans. Still other apologists have argued explicitly for the usefulness of a variety of apologetic methods in encounters with persons of differing beliefs and temperaments. A recent example of the latter is David K. Clark, whose book Dialogical Apologetics defends a “person-centered approach” to apologetics as distinguished from what he views as competing “content-oriented” approaches.

While debate over diverse apologetic methods continues, an increasing number of thinkers are claiming that the age of apologetics is over. These thinkers argue that apologetics assumes the ideal of rational knowledge that is the basis of modern rationalistic objections to Christianity. With the supposed death of modern rationalism and the advent of postmodernism, both anti-Christian rationalism and Christian rationalistic apologetics are said to be outmoded. Other Christian thinkers, on the other hand, argue that the contemporary situation is more complex. Postmodernism, they suggest, has not so much abandoned the rationalist ideal as it has qualified it. A place remains for apologetics, they conclude, though it must take into account the recent developments of postmodern thought.

The growing diversity of approaches to the study and practice of apologetics has made it necessary to devise some way of classifying these approaches and sorting out the various issues over which they differ. In the next chapter we will present an overview of these issues and offer an analysis of the major apologetic approaches.

For Further Study

Brown, Colin. Christianity and Western Thought: A History of Philosophers, Ideas, and Movements. Vol. 1, From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1990. Tends toward a fideist view of apologetics and Christian philosophy.

Bush, L. Russ, ed. Classical Readings in Christian Apologetics, a.d. 100-1800. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, Academie, 1983. See also the concluding chapter reviewing the history of apologetics since 1800. (Russ uses the term classical in its more customary sense, not in the technical sense used in this book.)

Craig, William Lane. The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus During the Deist Controversy. Texts and Studies in Religion 23. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985. Closest thing to an evidentialist review of the history of apologetics. In a lengthy first chapter, Craig covers the New Testament, the church fathers, and Thomas Aquinas (1-70).

Demarest, Bruce A. General Revelation: Historical Views and Contemporary Issues. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982. Textbook survey written from a classical apologetics perspective.

Frame, John M. Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought. Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1995. See especially Part IV, where Frame, a presuppositionalist, presents a more positive assessment of the thought of classical and evidentialist apologists than the assessment of his teacher Van Til (see below).

Mayers, Ronald B. Balanced Apologetics: Using Evidences and Presuppositions in Defense of the Faith. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996. Includes an in-depth study of the history of apologetics that seeks to balance the classical and evidentialist approaches with Reformed apologetics (87-195).

Miller, Ed. L., ed. Believing in God: Readings on Faith and Reason. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1996. Excellent collection of readings from Tertullian, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Calvin, Pascal, Paley, Kierkegaard, Swinburne, Plantinga, and many others.

Van Til, Cornelius. A Christian Theory of Knowledge. Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1969. The standard presuppositionalist survey of the history of Christian philosophy and apologetics, giving special attention to the church fathers, Roman Catholic thought, the differences between Kuyper and Warfield, and Buswell’s apologetic.

¹ Unfortunately, there is no satisfactory full-length textbook on the history of apologetics written from an evangelical perspective. The standard textbook remains Avery Cardinal Dulles, A History of Apologetics (New York: Corpus Books, 1971; reprint, Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 1999; 2d ed., Modern Apologetics Library, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), a Roman Catholic work that gives scant attention to modern conservative Protestant and evangelical apologetics. (All subsequent citations except as noted are from the second edition.) The second edition adds about six pages on twentieth-century evangelical apologetics (353-59). (For our part, we do not discuss modern Roman Catholic apologetics in this book.) For a liberal Protestant overview, see J. K. S. Reid, Christian Apologetics (London: Hodder & Stoughton; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969). Perhaps the best evangelical survey of the history of apologetics is found in Ronald B. Mayers, Balanced Apologetics: Using Evidences and Presuppositions in Defense of the Faith (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996), 87-195. For an excellent collection of readings, see L. Russ Bush, ed., Classical Readings in Christian Apologetics, a.d. 100-1800 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan—Academie, 1983). Bush concludes with a chapter reviewing the history of apologetics since 1800. Closely following the history of apologetics are the following works dealing with specific issues: Bruce A. Demarest, General Revelation: Historical Views and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982); William Lane Craig, The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus During the Deist Controversy, Texts and Studies in Religion, vol. 23 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985). Textbooks on the history of philosophy are also relevant, especially up to about 1750. Besides the standard works in this area, we would single out Colin Brown, Christianity and Western Thought: A History of Philosophers, Ideas, and Movements, vol. 1, From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1990).

² On New Testament apologetics, see especially E. F. Scott, The Apologetics of the New Testament (New York: Putman, 1907); F. F. Bruce, The Defense of the Gospel in the New Testament, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977).

³ Cf. Robert M. Bowman, Jr., Orthodoxy and Heresy: A Biblical Guide to Doctrinal Discernment (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 71-73.

⁴ On the apologetic perspective in Luke-Acts, see Dulles, History of Apologetics, 11-14, 19-21; Allison A. Trites, The New Testament Concept of Witness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 128-38; Frederic R. Howe, Challenge and Response: A Handbook of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 34-46; Mayers, Balanced Apologetics, 135-71; Craig, Historical Argument, 8-16; F. F. Bruce, “Paul’s Apologetic and the Purpose of Acts,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 69 (1986-87): 379-93; R. E. O. White, Luke’s Case for Christianity (Harrisburg, Pa.: Morehouse, 1990); Loveday Alexander, “The Acts of the Apostles as an Apologetic Text,” in Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians, ed. Mark Edwards, Martin Goodman, and Simon Price, in association with Christopher Rowland (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 15-44; and especially John W. Mauck, Paul on Trial: The Book of Acts as a Defense of Christianity (Nashville: Thomas Nelson—Nelson Reference, 2001).

⁵ The literature on Paul’s speech in Athens is voluminous. In addition to commentaries, the following works must be mentioned: [NOTE: items have been rearranged in chronological order in this and other endnotes for this chapter.] Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, “False Religions and the True,” in Warfield, Biblical and Theological Studies, ed. Samuel G. Craig (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1968), 560-80; Ned B. Stonehouse, Paul Before the Areopagus and Other Studies (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959); Bertil Gärtner, The Areopagus Speech and Natural Revelation, Acta seminarii neotestamentici upsaliensis, vol. 24 (Lund: Gleerup, 1955); Greg L. Bahnsen, “The Encounter of Jerusalem with Athens,” Ashland Theological Bulletin 13 (1980): 4-40, reprinted in Greg L. Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith, ed. Robert R. Booth (Atlanta: American Vision; Texarkana, Ark.: Covenant Media Foundation, 1996), 235-76; David L. Balch, “The Areopagus Speech: An Appeal to the Stoic Historian Posidonius against Later Stoics and the Epicureans,” in Greeks, Romans, and Christians: Essays in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe, ed. David L. Balch, Everett Ferguson, and Wayne A. Meeks (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 52-79; Marilyn McCord Adams, “Philosophy and the Bible: The Areopagus Speech,” Faith and Philosophy 9 (1992): 135-49; Darrell L. Bock, “Athenians Who Have Never Heard,” in Through No Fault of Their Own? The Fate of Those Who Have Never Heard, ed. William V. Crockett and James G. Sigountos (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 117-24; R. K. McGregor Wright, “Paul’s Purpose at Athens and the Problem of ‘Common Ground,’” Aquila and Priscilla Study Center, 1993, located 1/6/2005 online at http://www.dtl.org/apologetics/wright/athens-1.htm; Karl Olav Sandnes, “Paul and Socrates: The Aim of Paul’s Areopagus Speech,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 50 (1993): 13-26; John J. Kilgallen, “Acts 17:22-31: An Example of Interreligious Dialogue,” Studia Missionalia 43 (1994): 43-60; Mark D. Given, “Not Either/Or but Both/And in Paul’s Areopagus Speech,” Biblical Interpretation 3 (1995): 356-72; D. A. Carson, “Athens Revisited,” in Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmoderns, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 384-98; Kenneth D. Litwak, “Israel’s Prophets Meet Athens’ Philosophers: Scriptural Echoes in Acts 17:22-31,” Biblica 85 (2004): 199-216; and J. Daryl Charles, “Paul before the Areopagus: Reflections on the Apostle’s Encounter with Cultured Paganism,” Philosophia Christi 7 (2005): 125-40.

⁶ Studies of Romans 1 focusing on its relation to issues of apologetic importance include G. C. Berkouwer, General Revelation, Studies in Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 138-72; David L. Turner, “Cornelius Van Til and Romans 1:18-21: A Study in the Epistemology of Presuppositional Apologetics,” Grace Theological Journal 2 (1981): 45-58; Howe, Challenge and Response, 80-86; Demarest, General Revelation, 230-46; R. C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley, Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan—Academie, 1984), 40-63; Stephen R. Spencer, “Is Natural Theology Biblical?” Grace Theological Journal 9 (1988) 59-72; James Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology, Gifford Lectures 1991 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Aída Besançon Spencer, “Romans 1: Finding God in Creation,” in Through No Fault of Their Own, ed. Crockett and Sigountos, 125-35; Richard L. Smith, “The Supremacy of God in Apologetics: Romans 1:19-21 and the Transcendental Method of Cornelius Van Til” (Ph.D. diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1996); Richard Alan Young, “The Knowledge of God in Romans 1:18-23: Exegetical and Theological Reflections,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 43 (2000) 695-707.

⁷ Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God, 8.

⁸ On the implications of 1 Corinthians 1–2 for philosophy and apologetics, see William D. Dennison, Paul’s Two-Age Construction and Apologetics (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985); Paul W. Gooch, Partial Knowledge: Philosophical Studies in Paul (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987); Stanley K. Stowers, “Paul on the Use and Abuse of Reason,” in Greeks, Romans, and Christians, ed. Balch, et. al., 253-86; Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., “Some Epistemological Reflections on 1 Cor 2:6-16,” Westminster Theological Journal 57 (1995): 103-24.

⁹ On Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 15, in addition to commentaries, see W. Harold Mare, “Pauline Appeals to Historical Evidence,” Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society 11 (1968): 121-30 (which also discusses Acts 17); William Lane Craig, Historical Argument, 19-26, 551-60; Craig, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity, vol. 16 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989); Robert M. Bowman, Jr., Jehovah’s Witnesses, Zondervan Guide to Cults and Religious Movements (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 46-48; and especially N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God, Volume 3 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).

¹⁰ Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 4-5. On apologetics in John’s writings, see further Trites, New Testament Concept of Witness, 78-90; Norman L. Geisler, “Johannine Apologetics,” Bibliotheca Sacra 136 (1979): 333-43; Mayers, Balanced Apologetics, 137-43; Craig, Historical Argument, 16-19; and see also James Montgomery Boice, Witness and Revelation in the Gospel of John (Exeter: Paternoster, 1970); Andrew T. Lincoln, Truth on Trial: The Lawsuit Motif in the Fourth Gospel (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2001).

¹¹ On 1 Peter 3:15, see Howe, Challenge and Response, 15-17; Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God, 1-9, 27-30; William Edgar, Reasons of the Heart: Recovering Christian Persuasion, Hourglass Books (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 33-41; Renton Maclachan, “With Gentleness and Respect: The Implications for Christian Apologetics of Some Passages from 1 Peter,” Stimulus 4 (Fall 1996): 30-33.

¹² On apologetics in the second and third centuries, see Dulles, History of Apologetics, 27-55; Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966); Mayers, Balanced Apologetics, 173-95; Craig, Historical Argument, 26-46; Robert M. Grant, Greek Apologists of the Second Century (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988); Ford Lewis Battles, The Apologists, Study Outline 1 (Allison Park, Pa.: Pickwick, 1991); Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians, ed. Edwards, Goodman, and Price (1999). The works of the church fathers from this period are still most conveniently found in a set of volumes edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to a.d. 325, rev. A. Cleveland Cox, 10 vols. (1885; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969).

¹³ On Justin Martyr, see Henry Chadwick, “Justin Martyr’s Defence of Christianity,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 47 (1965): 275-97; Leslie W. Barnard, Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967); David F. Wright, “Christian Faith in the Greek World: Justin Martyr’s Testimony,” Evangelical Quarterly 54 (1982): 77-87; Arthur J. Droge, “Justin Martyr and the Restoration of Philosophy,” Church History 56 (1987): 303-19; Sara J. Denning-Bolle, “Christian Dialogue as Apologetic: The Case of Justin Martyr Seen in Historical Context,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 69 (1987): 492-510; Graham A. Keith, “Justin Martyr and Religious Exclusivism,” Tyndale Bulletin 43 (1992): 57-80.

¹⁴ Bahnsen, “Socrates or Christ,” 223.

¹⁵ On Origen, see Joseph Wilson Trigg, Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third Century (Atlanta: John Knox, 1983); Henri Crouzel, Origen, trans. A. S. Worrell (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989); Robert J. Hauck, “They Saw What They Saw: Sense Knowledge in Early Christian Polemic,” Harvard Theological Review 81 (1988): 239-49; Johan F. Goud, “Origen (185-254),” in Bringing into Captivity Every Thought: Capita Selecta in the History of Christian Evaluations of Non-Christian Philosophy, ed. Jacob Klapwijk, Sander Griffioen, and Gerben Groenewoud, Christian Studies Today (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991), 29-47.

¹⁶ Craig, Historical Argument, 41-46.

¹⁷ The standard English edition is Origen: Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick, corrected reprint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

¹⁸ Augustine’s many works are most accessible in English in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 1st ser. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), hereafter cited as NPNF. Three of his most important works are conveniently available in one volume found in almost every public library: Augustine, The Confessions; The City of God; On Christian Doctrine, Great Books of the Western World, vol. 18 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952). The literature on Augustine is enormous. Books of special relevance to Augustine’s apologetics include B. B. Warfield, Studies in Tertullian and Augustine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1930); Roy W. Battenhouse, ed., A Companion to the Study of St. Augustine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955); Gordon R. Lewis, “Faith and Reason in the Thought of St. Augustine” (Ph.D. diss., Syracuse University, 1959); Étienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Augustine, trans. L. E. M. Lynch (New York: Random House, 1960); Eugene Portalie, A Guide to the Thought of Saint Augustine, trans. Ralph J. Bastian, Library of Living Catholic Thought (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1960); Ronald H. Nash, The Light of the Mind: St. Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1969); Terry L. Miethe, comp., Augustinian Bibliography, 1970-1980: With Essays on the Fundamentals of Augustinian Scholarship (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1982); Norman L. Geisler, ed., What Augustine Says (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1982); Henry Chadwick, Augustine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Curtis Chang, Engaging Unbelief: A Captivating Strategy from Augustine & Aquinas (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000), especially 40-52, 66-93. The periodical Augustinian Studies has published numerous relevant articles, for example, J. Roland E. Ramirez, “The Priority of Reason over Faith in Augustine,” Augustinian Studies 13 (1982): 123-131. Other studies worth noting include Demarest, General Revelation, 25-31; Mayers, Balanced Apologetics, 85-96; Sproul, Gerstner, and Linsley, Classical Apologetics, 189-96; Craig, Historical Argument, 53-60; Norman Kretzmann, “Faith Seeks, Understanding Finds: Augustine’s Charter for Christian Philosophy,” in Christian Philosophy, ed. Thomas P. Flint (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 1-36; Dewey J. Hoitenga, Jr., Faith and Reason from Plato to Plantinga: An Introduction to Reformed Epistemology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 57-142; Abraham P. Bos, “Augustine (354-430),” in Bringing into Captivity Every Thought, ed. Klapwijk, et. al., 49-66; Byron Bitar, “Augustine, Natural Theology, and General Revelation” (paper presented to the Evangelical Theological Seminary annual convention, 1997); Kenneth Richard Samples, “Augustine of Hippo,” in 2 parts, Facts for Faith 1 (2001): 36-41; 2 (2001): 34-39; Dulles, History of Apologetics, 73-85.

¹⁹ On The City of God, see John Anjola Laoye, “Augustine’s Apologetic Use of the Old Testament as Reflected Especially in the ‘De Civitate Dei’” (Th.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1972); Ford Lewis Battles, Augustine: City of God, Study Outline 9 (Pittsburgh: Ford Lewis Battles, 1973).

²⁰ Augustine, Epistles 120; On the Predestination of the Saints 2.5; On the Spirit and the Letter 31.54.

²¹ City of God 11.3-4; Confessions 7.9.14; Epistles 120; etc.

²² Tractatus on the Gospel of John 29.6 (NPNF, 7:184).

²³ Sermons 76.1-2 (NPNF, 6:481).

²⁴ On the Predestination of the Saints 2.5.

²⁵ City of God 8.5-6, 10; cf. Tractatus on the Gospel of John 2.4. On Augustine’s arguments for the existence of God, besides works already cited, see John A. Mourant, “The Augustinian Argument for the Existence of God,” in Inquiries into Medieval Philosophy: A Collection in Honor of Francis P. Clarke, ed. James F. Ross, Contributions in Philosophy, vol. 4 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing, 1971); J. Roland E. Ramirez, “Augustine’s Proof for God’s Existence from the Experience of Beauty: Confessions, X,6,” Augustinian Studies 19 (1988): 121-30.

²⁶ Augustine, City of God 8.12.

²⁷ On Faith in Things That Are Not Seen 5 (NPNF, 3:339).

²⁸ Ibid., 5-10; City of God 22.1-5.

²⁹ Dulles, History of Apologetics, 91. On apologetics and Christian philosophy during this period, see the classic study Étienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York: Scribner, 1938).

³⁰ The standard English edition of Anselm’s works is Anselm of Canterbury, trans. and ed. Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson, 4 vols. (New York: Edwin Mellen Press; London: SCM, 1974-1976). A more accessible collection may be found in Brian Davies and Gillian R. Evans, eds., Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Studies of Anselm’s thought include Jasper Hopkins, A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972); Richard R. La Croix, Proslogion II and III: A Third Interpretation of Anselm’s Argument (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972); Gillian R. Evans, Anselm and Talking about God (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Evans, Anselm, Outstanding Christian Thinkers (Wilton, Conn.: Morehouse, 1989); Marilyn McCord Adams, “Fides Quaerens Intellectum: St. Anselm’s Method in Philosophical Theology,” Faith and Philosophy 9 (1992): 409-35; Gregory Schufreider, Confessions of a Rational Mystic: Anselm’s Early Writings (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1994); Frederick Van Fleteren and Joseph C. Schnaubelt, eds., Twenty-five Years (1969-1994) of Anselm Studies: Review and Critique of Recent Scholarly Views, Texts and Studies in Religion, vol. 70, Anselm Studies, vol. 3 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996); John R. Fortin, ed., Saint Anselm: His Origins and Influence, Texts and Studies in Religion 91 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001); David Bradshaw, “Faith and Reason in St. Anselm’s Monologion,” Philosophia Christi 4 (2002): 509-17; Brian Davies and Brian Leftow, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, Cambridge Companions to Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

³¹ Anselm, Proslogion 1, in Anselm of Canterbury, ed. Hopkins and Richardson, 1:93.

³² See chapter 6, n. 30, for a list of modern works on the ontological argument.

³³ Recent studies focusing on Cur Deus Homo include Robert B. Strimple, “St. Anselm’s Cur deus homo and John Calvin’s Doctrine of the Atonement,” in Anselm: Aosta, Bec and Canterbury, ed. David E. Luscombe and Gillian R. Evans (Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 348-60; Katherin A. Rogers, “A Defense of Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo Argument,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 74 (2000): 187-200; F. B. Asiedu, “Anselm and the Unbelievers: Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Cur Deus Homo,” Theological Studies 62 (2001): 530-48.

³⁴ Anselm, “Commendation of This Work to Pope Urban II,” in Why God Became a Man (Cur Deus Homo), in Anselm of Canterbury, 3:41.

³⁵ Anselm, preface to Why God Became a Man, in ibid., 43.

³⁶ Why God Became a Man 1.1, in ibid., 49; note the reference to 1 Peter 3:15.

³⁷ Why God Became a Man 1.3, in ibid., 52.

³⁸ Works on Thomas Aquinas are almost innumerable. Popular-level introductions include those by Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1956); evangelical apologist Norman L. Geisler, Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Appraisal (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991; reprint, Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2003); and on a lighter note, Timothy M. Renick, Aquinas for Armchair Theologians (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), reflecting a mainline Protestant perspective. Other major works on Aquinas are Étienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K. Shook (New York: Random House, 1956); Frederick C. Copleston, Aquinas (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin Books, 1957); Thomas Gornall, Philosophy of God: The Elements of Thomist Natural Theology (Oxford: Blackwell; London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1962); M.-D. Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, trans. A.-M. Landry and D. Hughes (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1964); Anthony Kenny, ed., Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays, Modern Studies in Philosophy (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976); Demarest, General Revelation, 34-42; Mayers, Balanced Apologetics, 96-103; Arvin Vos, Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought: A Critique of Protestant Views on the Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Christian University Press/Christian College Consortium; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985); W. J. Hankey, God in Himself: Aquinas’ Doctrine of God as Expounded in the “Summa Theologiae” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Leo J. Elders, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990); Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992); Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); John I. Jenkins, Knowledge and Faith in Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Eugene F. Rogers, Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Knowledge of God (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999); Brian Davies, ed., Thomas Aquinas: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Aidan Nichols, Discovering Aquinas: An Introduction to His Life, Work, and Influence (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2002; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); Eleonore Stump, Aquinas, Arguments of the Philosophers (London and New York: Routledge, 2003); Jim Fodor and Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, eds., Aquinas in Dialogue: Thomas for the Twenty-first Century (New York: Blackwell, 2004). On Aquinas as an apologist, see especially Chang, Engaging Unbelief, especially 52-64, 94-136, 174-84.

³⁹ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. Anton C. Pegis (Notre Dame, Ind., and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975).

⁴⁰ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae: Latin Text and English Translation, Introduction, Notes, Appendices and Glossaries (London: Blackfriars, 1974). An accessible edition that includes all of Part I and generous portions of Parts II and III is Saint Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, rev. Daniel J. Sullivan, 2 Vols.; Great Books of the Western World, vols. 19-20 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952). See also Peter Kreeft, A Summa of the “Summa”: The Essential Philosophical Passages of St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa Theologica” Edited and Explained for Beginners (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990).

⁴¹ The literature on Aquinas’s “five ways” is astonishingly vast. In addition to the sources already cited, see especially Anthony Kenny, The Five Ways: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Proofs of God’s Existence (New York: Schocken, 1969; reprint, Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980); William Lane Craig, The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz (New York: Macmillan, 1980), 152-205; C. F. J. Martin, Thomas Aquinas: God and Explanations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997); John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being, Monographs of the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2000).

⁴² See further Craig, Historical Argument, 61-70.

⁴³ On the origins of the Reformation and the teachings of the Reformers, see H. A. Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought, Illustrated by Key Documents (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966); Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers (Nashville: Broadman, 1985); Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).

⁴⁴ See chapter 16 for a detailed discussion of Luther’s approach to apologetics.

⁴⁵ See chapter 12 on Calvin’s approach to apologetics.

⁴⁶ On apologetics and related developments during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Demarest, General Revelation, 61-91; Craig, Historical Argument, 71-352; William R. Everdell, Christian Apologetics in France, 1730-1790: The Roots of Romantic Religion, Texts and Studies in Religion, vol. 31 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1987); Brown, Christianity and Western Thought, 159-234.

⁴⁷ Only the briefest survey of apologetics since the Enlightenment will be given here, since more extended discussions of the work of post-Enlightenment apologists will be presented in later chapters of the book. General studies relating to the history of apologetics during this period include Demarest, General Revelation, 93-225; Alan P. F. Sell, Defending and Declaring the Faith: Some Scottish Examples, 1860-1920 (Exeter, U.K.: Paternoster Press; Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1987); Brown, Christianity and Western Thought, 235-330.

Apologists Who Emphasize Reason

The classical apologetical tradition, as the term classical suggests, is the dominant approach to apologetics in church history, especially prior to the modern period. It emphasizes the presentation of Christianity as rational—as logically coherent and supportable by sound arguments—and offers what its advocates consider proofs of various types (though especially philosophical proofs) for the existence of God as a first step in defending the truth claims of the Christian faith. As we are using the term in this book, ‘classical apologetics’ also refers to an idealized type that is more or less fully exemplified in apologists in that tradition. Of necessity, then, we will be offering generalizations; that is, what we say about apologetics of this idealized type or approach is generally applicable to apologists in the classical tradition, but one must allow for considerable variations and exceptions. One other qualification needs to be made: as a distinct approach and explicit methodological stance, classical apologetics, like the other three basic approaches discussed in this book, is actually a modern development.

In this chapter we will examine the roots of classical apologetics and consider briefly the thought of five modern classical apologists, among whom is Norman L. Geisler, who represents perhaps the “purest” form of this approach.

Historical Roots of Classical Apologetics

Classical apologetics, more than the other three systems discussed in this book, draws on the apologetic thought of Christian theologians and philosophers throughout church history. Indeed, most advocates of the classical approach count it an important point in their favor that their approach is in line with the major apologists from the early and medieval church. The authors of the book Classical Apologetics, for example, assert with regard to “the classic Christian view” that “theistic proofs” are a valid part of apologetics, “From the Apologists to the dawn of our own era, this has been the central teaching of the church, Eastern, Roman, Protestant, the teaching of the creeds and of the theologians.”¹ Although this claim is arguably overstated, there is a significant tradition of Christian apologetics throughout church history in which theistic proofs played a major role. Since we have already given a fairly detailed survey of the history of apologetics in chapter 2, we will review that history only very briefly here.

The classical apologists lay great emphasis on the examples of apologetic argument found in the New Testament (especially Paul’s apologetic speech in Athens in Acts 17). Elements of the classical method were developed by the Apologists of the second century, most notably Justin Martyr. Certain aspects of the apologetic thought of Augustine continued this classical tradition. He made use of philosophical proofs for God’s existence, especially but not exclusively in his earlier writings. To prove that this God had revealed himself in Christ, Augustine cited miracles and fulfilled biblical prophecy and emphasized the dramatic growth and triumph of the church through centuries of persecution and suppression.

It is in the medieval period, though, that the classical approach began to receive systematic formulation. Anselm offered his ontological argument for the existence of God both to edify believers and to challenge and persuade unbelievers. He also presented an argument for the necessity of God becoming man in order to redeem us that proved the point, he claimed, without assuming any knowledge about Christ. Anselm was careful to add that in the end faith was to be placed in God and in his revelation in Scripture, not in Anselm’s arguments. Still, his approach was quite rationally oriented.

Likewise, Thomas Aquinas developed a number of philosophical arguments for the existence of God and expounded Christian teaching on the nature of God in Aristotelian philosophical categories. Thomas rejected Anselm’s ontological argument, preferring various forms of the cosmological argument, but both types of argument are philosophical arguments for theism. Again, Thomas was very careful to say that such philosophical proofs were not the basis of faith or a substitute for faith. According to Thomas, those who rely on philosophical argument alone will never have an adequate knowledge of God. Yet his theistic proofs have often been utilized as a line of defense against atheism, which was not even a serious problem in his day. Thomas’s approach to philosophy (known as Thomism) has inspired many succeeding works of classical apologetics.

While many of the Reformers in the first generation of the Protestant Reformation rejected or denigrated classical apologetic arguments, not all of them did. Philip Melanchthon, in particular, was in his later years more appreciative of classical apologetics than Martin Luther had been, and presented arguments in the Thomistic fashion in the later editions of his Loci communes. Likewise, many Calvinist theologians in the seventeenth century found greater value in philosophical proofs of a classical type than had John Calvin himself. When deism and other forms of skepticism arose in the seventeenth century, Protestants typically answered with arguments rooted in the classical apologetics of Anselm and Aquinas. Natural theology, the construction of arguments defending or proving a theistic worldview on the basis of rational considerations apart from divine revelation, became a regular part of Christian apologetics.

In the nineteenth century the classical theistic proofs were endorsed and utilized by a wide variety of Christian theologians and apologists, including Charles Hodge, whose three-volume Systematic Theology was probably the most influential work of its kind published in nineteenth-century America. In the twentieth century Roman Catholic philosophers, most notably Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, rekindled an interest in Thomistic philosophy, which is probably more popular and influential now than ever before among both Catholic and Protestant apologists.

In the rest of this chapter we will examine in some detail the apologetic contributions of four modern apologists in the classical tradition. Although they have their differences, they all endorse an approach that seeks to offer a rational method of proof (however variously the proofs may be derived) for the Christian position.

B. B. Warfield

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (1851-1921) was a professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1871 until the end of his life.² During that half-century he wrote an impressive array of books and articles in the fields of New Testament criticism and theology, historical theology, and systematic theology.³ Although few of his works would be classified as apologetics per se—in fact, Warfield wrote no book on the subject—virtually all his writings had a strong apologetic purpose and thrust to them. He was the last and arguably the most brilliant representative of the so-called Old Princeton school of theology and apologetics. A few years after he died, Princeton Seminary was reorganized under liberal theological leadership, and the mantle of Old Princeton was taken up by Westminster Theological Seminary in nearby Philadelphia. Westminster was founded by Warfield’s former student and younger colleague at Princeton, J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937).⁴

What engulfed Princeton shortly after Warfield’s death was in fact the main focus of his apologetic labors throughout his ministry: the rise of liberal theology grounded on an antisupernaturalist approach to the Bible and Christianity. Arguably the primary concern of Warfield’s apologetics was to uphold the supernatural character of Christianity. This meant arguing, first of all, that unless Jesus Christ was a supernatural person, specifically truly God incarnate, and unless he rose supernaturally from the grave, Christianity is simply not true. It is one thing for avowed non-Christians to reject the supernatural; it is another thing entirely for professing Christians to do so. Warfield lamented the fact that many people were rejecting Christianity while clinging to it in name. That people do this is testimony to the significance of Christianity in the world, but it is still misleading.⁵

Thus, for Warfield a great deal of apologetics was simply explaining why Christianity could not be affirmed or accepted without the supernatural. A naturalistic Christianity is a mere moralism, a philosophy of human self-improvement inspired by the idea of the divine. True Christianity is a religion of redemption, a revelation of the real God’s grace reconciling us and transforming us through faith in Jesus Christ. Although Warfield unabashedly defended Calvinism as the most consistent form of Christianity, in fact the general tenor and focus of his apologetics was supportive of the most basic elements of orthodox Christianity: the truth of the Bible, the deity of Christ, and the virgin birth, sinlessness, miracles, atoning death, and resurrection of Christ.

Part of Warfield’s agenda for reclaiming supernatural Christianity as the only true Christian religion was to show that this is what the Christian church had always believed and its best theologians had always taught. He also wanted to show that the premodern Christian theologians’ belief in the supernatural was not an irrational or blind faith, but one grounded in evidence. In making this case he expressed appreciation for the great apologists in the classical apologetic tradition such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas (though above all Augustine). He also held in high regard Joseph Butler and William Paley, apologists who paved the way for the evidentialist approach, and Blaise Pascal, whose apologetic in significant ways moved in a fideist direction.⁶ Although they took apologetics in new directions, these three men were to a great extent consistent with the classical tradition, and thus Warfield could see them as contributing to the development of apologetics as he understood it. He gave considerable attention to showing that the theology of the knowledge of God taught by Augustine and Calvin was consistent with a rational apologetic for the Christian faith.⁷

According to Warfield, the science of theology takes as its primary data the facts of Scripture. But for theology to be properly grounded, we must know that the Bible is indeed inspired Scripture from God. Ultimately this means that the first principles of theology must be to establish the fact of God’s existence. Warfield distinguished five subdivisions of apologetics based on five subjects. The first three are God, religion, and revelation, by which he means that apologetics “must begin by establishing the existence of God, the capacity of the human mind to know Him, and the accessibility of knowledge concerning Him.”⁸ From there apologetics must go on “to establish the divine origin of Christianity as the religion of revelation in the special sense of the word,” and finally “to establish the trustworthiness of the Christian Scriptures as the documentation of the revelation of God for the redemption of sinners.”⁹

Warfield thus advocated a two-step method of defending the Christian faith. First, one establishes the truth of God’s existence and the possibility of knowing God. Second, one shows from the evidence that God is known in his revelation in Christ and in Scripture. Sometimes Warfield subdivides these two steps, as when he writes (with A. A. Hodge), “In dealing with sceptics it is not proper to begin with the evidence which immediately establishes Inspiration, but we should first establish Theism, then the historical credibility of the Scriptures, and then the divine origin of Christianity.”¹⁰ The method of first establishing theism (belief in God) before one seeks to establish the truth of Christianity is at the heart of the classical approach to apologetics.

Not everyone agrees that Warfield was a classical apologist. Most notably, Kim Riddlebarger, in his excellent dissertation on Warfield, interprets Warfield as an evidentialist.¹¹ He specifically distinguishing Warfield’s method from that of Norman Geisler (whom we discuss below) or R. C. Sproul and John Gerstner, the lead authors of the book Classical Apologetics.¹² His reason for categorizing Warfield as an evidentialist is that the classical theistic proofs play little role in Warfield’s apologetic, although Warfield acknowledged their validity.¹³ Riddlebarger also shows that Warfield’s defense of the resurrection of Christ as an historical event focused on the evidences.¹⁴ (Still, this would be the case with a classical apologist as well as an evidentialist.) His strongest point for classifying Warfield as an evidentialist is Warfield’s contention that a “non-miraculous world-view” might be overturned by the factual evidence for miracles.¹⁵ However, Warfield is here focusing on establishing a more robust Christian theism, including miracles, over against a “world-view” such as deism. His argument here is thus compatible with understanding his basic method as the “two-step” classical approach (first show that God exists, then show that God has miraculously revealed himself). In any case, Riddlebarger’s excellent analysis shows that the line between classical and evidentialist apologetics was in practice a blurry one even in Warfield’s day.

For Warfield, apologetics is essentially a theological discipline. Indeed, it occupies a primary place in the theological curriculum. It has the inestimably important task of establishing the fundamental truths and principles on which Christian theology rests. In this sense it might be described as a “pretheological” discipline, but in the broader sense Warfield regarded it as the first of the theological disciplines.

It should be noted, then, that strictly speaking Warfield distinguished apologetics as a formal, theoretical discipline at the head of theology, from what he called apology. Apology is a branch of practical theology and deals with the pragmatic question of how Christians should explain and defend their beliefs when speaking with non-Christians.¹⁶

C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), known to his friends as “Jack,” was almost without doubt the most popular Christian apologist internationally in the twentieth century.¹⁷ A British scholar of medieval literature who converted to Christianity in midlife, Lewis did not develop a specific apologetic system but approached the claims of Christianity from several directions.¹⁸

Having converted from atheism to Christianity, he gave much attention to refuting the philosophical objections to the Christian faith that had bothered him as an atheist.¹⁹ Thus the focus of his apologetic writings is to defend the Christian claim that a real, personal, and moral Creator exists to whom we are all accountable and who has intervened in human affairs through miracles, especially the miraculous Person of Jesus Christ. Lewis never tired of emphasizing to skeptics that he was not recommending that they believe in Christ because it would make them happier, but because it was true: “As you perhaps know, I haven’t always been a Christian. I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that.”²⁰

Lewis’s best-known apologetic work, Mere Christianity, was really a combination of three books (The Case for Christianity, Christian Behaviour, and Beyond Personality). In it he refuted atheism, naturalism, and dualism, and presented a case for the unique claims of Christ. A 1993 Christianity Today poll found it far and away the most influential book in readers’ Christian lives, apart from the Bible.²¹ In its original form as BBC radio talks during World War II, Mere Christianity may actually have contributed in some measure to the Allied victory by encouraging faith and hope among the British people.

Lewis’s apologetic efforts, unlike those of many in the classical tradition, were not limited to rational argument but adopted a variety of genres, reflecting his literary flair. The Pilgrim’s Regress uses allegory to treat many issues in the philosophy of religion.²² Surprised by Joy is a biographical apologetic that develops the experience of intense longing for the transcendent.²³ Lewis’s three-volume space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength) and seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia defend the Christian worldview through imagination instead of reason.²⁴ Lewis explained his apologetic purpose by noting that “any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people’s minds under cover of romance without their knowing it.”²⁵ By stripping Christian truths “of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations,” one could sneak past the “watchful dragons” that keep unbelievers from seriously considering those truths.²⁶ Lewis’s humor, wit, and style have thus attracted many non-Christian readers to his books. As Burson and Walls observe, “One should not underestimate the power of style in apologetics, especially in our day. Lewis is an excellent example of how style and substance can work hand in glove to achieve maximum impact.”²⁷ In 1988 over 40 million copies of Lewis’s books were in print.²⁸ No wonder, then, that Time magazine labeled him the twentieth century’s “most-read apologist for God.”²⁹

For the child at heart he created the land of Narnia and the untamed lion/savior, Aslan. For science fiction readers he traveled to Perelandra with Ransom. For the philosopher and theologian he reasoned about pain and miracles, as well as debating doctrines of Christianity and the philosophy of men. For the lover of myth, he wrote an adaptation of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. For the pain stricken he observed grief and spoke of prayer. For those enchanted with rhythm and rhyme he wrote poetry. For those concerned with the afterlife he wrote about Heaven and Hell and exposed the mind of Satan. For the weak and questioning he wrote letters of personal encouragement and advice.³⁰

Lewis’s approach to apologetics defies simple categorization precisely because of the diverse ways in which he sought to display and defend the truth of “mere Christianity.” However, we agree with Norman Geisler and David K. Clark, both of whom classify Lewis as a classical apologist.³¹ (We will refer to various elements of Lewis’s apologetic in the next two chapters, where we elaborate on the classical apologetic model.) When dealing with outright atheism, Lewis generally offered philosophical arguments for belief in God in preparation for presenting the case for Christianity—though not the specific arguments that most classical apologists prefer. Moreover, toward the end of his career, Lewis found that arguments for belief in God’s existence were not as helpful as he once assumed:

It is very difficult to produce arguments on the popular level for the existence of God. And many of the most popular arguments seem to me invalid. . . .

Fortunately, though very oddly, I have found that people are usually disposed to hear the divinity of Our Lord discussed before going into the existence of God. When I began I used, if I were giving two lectures, to devote the first to mere Theism; but I soon gave up this method because it seemed to arouse little interest. The number of clear and determined atheists is apparently not very large.³²

In the above comments, Lewis sounds closer in spirit to the evidentialist approach of launching directly into the factual evidence for Jesus’ divine acts and identity without first trying to make a case for theism.³³ One should note, though, Lewis’s explanation for this change in tactic: he did not find it necessary or helpful to argue separately for theism because apparently few of his listeners were dogmatic atheists. The implication is that Lewis would have continued to argue for theism before discussing the evidence for Christianity if the opposition to theism had been more forceful.

Lewis, then, may be broadly described as a classical apologist, with the qualification that (like most apologists) he did not espouse an explicit apologetic method derived from a formal theory of apologetics. Indeed, in his published writings he never discussed apologetic theory. Rather, he employed varying tactics and modes of argument and persuasion in order to address people’s questions, doubts, and skepticism in interesting and effective ways.

Norman L. Geisler

One Christian apologist who has advocated a formal theory of apologetic method is Norman L. Geisler, whose books on apologetics, philosophy of religion, ethics, and biblical studies have made him a key figure in Christian apologetics. He has authored, co-authored, and edited some sixty books.³⁴ A philosopher by training, Geisler has taught apologetics and theology at several major evangelical seminaries since the late 1950s, and is the president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Matthews, North Carolina, which he co-founded in 1992. He was also a prominent member of the Evangelical Theological Society,³⁵ culminating in his serving as president in 1998.

Although Geisler is evangelical Protestant in his theology, he is a convinced Thomist in his philosophy and apologetics. His approach to apologetics proceeds in two steps.³⁶ First the apologist builds a case for theism by demonstrating how it conforms to rational criteria used to evaluate the truth claims of competing worldviews. Having shown that theism is true according to these criteria, the apologist may then present the evidence for the historical truth claims of Christianity.

Geisler elaborates this two-step method (characteristic of classical apologetics) in a series of “Twelve Points that Show Christianity is True”:

1. Truth about reality is knowable.

2. The opposite of true is false.

3. It is true that the theistic God exists.

4. If God exists, then miracles are possible.

5. Miracles can be used to confirm a message from God
(i.e., as an act of God to confirm a word from God).

6. The New Testament is historically reliable.

7. The New Testament says Jesus claimed to be God.

8. Jesus' claim to be God was miraculously confirmed by:
a. His fulfillment of many prophecies about Himself;
b. His sinless and miraculous life;
c. His prediction and accomplishment of His resurrection.

9. Therefore, Jesus is God.

10. Whatever Jesus (who is God) teaches is true.

11. Jesus taught that the Bible is the Word of God.

12. Therefore, it is true that the Bible is the Word of God
(and anything opposed to it is false).

Geisler says that this argument “builds the case for Christianity from the ground up”—that is, it begins with undeniable points and proceeds from those to show that Christianity is true.³⁷ The first five points correspond to the first step of the classical argument, while the last seven points correspond to the second step.

Geisler’s two most important works, for our purposes, are his Philosophy of Religion (the second edition of which was co-authored with Winfried Corduan) and Christian Apologetics. In view of his influence in contemporary evangelical apologetics, we will review the argument of both of these books in some detail.

Geisler’s Philosophy of Religion

Geisler divides philosophy of religion into four major divisions, dealing with (1) religious experience, (2) God and reason, (3) religious language, and (4) the problem of evil. We will consider each of these subjects in turn.

Religious experience. The issue dominating the first part of Geisler’s Philosophy of Religion is whether experiences of God or the supernatural can be considered rational. Geisler argues that they can because “the history of mankind, sacred or secular, supports the thesis that by nature man has an irresistible urge to transcend himself” (63-64).³⁸ Nevertheless, he argues that verification is necessary to discern that there really is a God to fulfill the human need for transcendence

God and reason. Such verification can be found in a philosophical theistic proof. In the second section of the book, titled “God and Reason,” Geisler examines the function of theistic proofs and defends a version of the cosmological argument. He maintains that “the theist need not be concerned about showing that God’s nonexistence is inconceivable but only that it is not undeniable. After all, what the theist seeks is not mere rational inconceivability but existential undeniability. That is, the theist seeks a necessary Being, not a necessary Thought at the end of his argument” (100-101). The theistic proof that Geisler regards as fundamental is the cosmological argument, which is based on the principle of causality. He examines three other standard philosophical arguments for God’s existence—the argument from design in nature, the argument from morality, and the ontological argument—and argues that in each case the principle of causality is assumed. If this principle is accepted, Geisler maintains, each of these three arguments will depend on a causal form of the cosmological argument.

Religious language. The third part of Geisler’s book focuses on the problem of religious language. Even if a sound argument for the existence of God can be made, how can we intelligently speak about that which transcends all our experience? Geisler maintains that every negation implies a prior affirmation, and that therefore purely negative God-talk is meaningless. The positive knowledge of God implied by negative God-talk requires that language about God be understood univocally—as having an identity of meaning when referring to both God and creatures—to avoid a descent into religious skepticism. Without such univocal understanding, Geisler (along with the late medieval philosopher Duns Scotus) maintains that we would be using words without really knowing what they meant. On the other hand, Geisler also agrees with Aquinas that God cannot possess perfections in the same way created things possess them.

The problem of evil. In the fourth and final part of Philosophy of Religion, Geisler considers three ways to relate God and evil. The first, atheism, affirms the existence of evil and denies the existence of God. Atheists reason that if God exists, he is not essentially good, since he should destroy all evil but does not. Moreover, God evidently cannot do the best, since this is not the best of all possible worlds. Geisler argues that although God has not yet destroyed evil, he will do so, and in a way that leads to the best possible world. The second alternative is illusionism, the denial of the reality of evil. Geisler points out that illusionism cannot account satisfactorily for the origin of the illusion of evil. The third alternative affirms both God (though not necessarily the biblical God) and evil. Some options in this category, such as dualism, finite godism, and sadism, are incompatible with theism. Geisler raises logical objections to each option and turns to solutions to the problem of evil that are open to theism. After examining the alternatives available to the theistic God, Geisler concludes that “the morally best world is better than a morally good world or than no moral world at all” (354). That this world, despite its temporary degradation due to sin, is the best way to the best world will eventually be confirmed at the end of history in the Final Judgment.

Geisler’s Christian Apologetics

Geisler’s textbook Christian Apologetics is divided into three parts. In the first part he considers how to test competing truth claims. Having chosen a test for truth, he applies it to the major worldviews in the second part and argues that theism—the view that the world was created by a God who is able to perform miracles—is the true worldview. Finally, in the third part he presents evidence in support of the Christian faith.

Apologetic method. Geisler critically evaluates seven methodological approaches to the question of God: agnosticism, rationalism, fideism, experientialism, evidentialism, pragmatism, and combinationalism. He concludes that each of these epistemological methods makes a contribution but is inadequate as a test for truth. In their place he proposes unaffirmability as the test for the falsehood of a worldview and undeniability as the test for the truth of a worldview. Unaffirmability occurs when a statement is directly self-defeating, such as “I cannot express myself in words,” or indirectly self-defeating, such as “I know that one cannot know anything about reality” (142).³⁹ Undeniability applies to statements that are definitional or tautologous, such as “Triangles have three sides,” as well as to statements which are existentially self-confirming, such as “I exist” (143-144). These tests for truth should be compared to the first two points of Geisler’s 12-point argument (truth is knowable and the opposite of true is false).

Theistic apologetics. Using the two tests of unaffirmability and undeniability, Geisler seeks to demonstrate that all nontheistic worldviews are directly or indirectly unaffirmable, and only theism is affirmable and undeniable. He examines several competing worldviews (deism, pantheism, panentheism, atheism) and argues that all of them fail the test for truth. For example, deism is a self-defeating position because it acknowledges the miracle of an ex nihilo creation but denies that other miracles are possible. Pantheism is self-defeating because it involves a person (the pantheist) claiming that individual finite selves (such as the pantheist) are less than real. Dogmatic atheism, in its insistence that God must not exist because of the reality of evil, must assume God (as the ground of morality) in order to disprove God. By contrast, Geisler develops a revised cosmological argument with undeniable premises (something exists, nothing comes from nothing) “that leads inescapably to the existence of an infinitely perfect and powerful Being beyond this world who is the current sustaining cause of all finite, changing, and contingent beings” (258). This conclusion corresponds to the third point of Geisler’s 12-point apologetic.

Christian apologetics. Having established the validity of the theistic worldview, Geisler then deals with miracles, the role of history and the establishment of the historical reliability of the New Testament, the deity and authority of Jesus Christ, and finally the inspiration and authority of the Bible. Since he is shifting from judging between worldviews to judging within the theistic worldview (that is, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism), he moves away from the criteria of unaffirmability and undeniability to the probabilistic criterion of systematic consistency (comprehensiveness, adequacy, consistency, coherence). Geisler argues that given the truth of theism, one must acknowledge the possibility of miracles (the fourth point of Geisler’s 12-point apologetic). Furthermore, the existence of God guarantees that history has meaning and that it is possible for human beings to know historical events. This means that God could use miracles in history to confirm his message (the fifth point). From these premises Geisler proceeds to examine the case for Christianity. He argues that the New Testament writings may be regarded as authentic and reliable (point #6), and then applies the methods of historical investigation to those documents to show that Jesus Christ claimed to be God (point #7) and that he vindicated this claim by fulfilling Old Testament prophecies and rising from the dead (point #8). The most systematically consistent interpretation of these facts is that Christ was, in truth, the Son of God (point #9). On the basis of Christ’s divine authority, then, Christians believe the Bible to be the word of God (264-265; compare points #10-12).

Peter Kreeft

Peter Kreeft is a Roman Catholic professor of philosophy at Boston College. He has written numerous books and has emerged as a Christian apologist whose works are popular among Protestants as well as Catholics.⁴⁰

Even more so than Geisler, Kreeft models his approach on the work of Thomas Aquinas. Kreeft edited and annotated one of the best digests of Aquinas’s major work, the Summa Theologica,⁴¹ and in his Handbook of Christian Apologetics, co-authored with Ronald K. Tacelli, he self-consciously modeled his method on that of Aquinas. In fact, they “even thought of titling it Summa Apologetica” (12).⁴² The book is divided into chapters dealing with broadly defined issues (e.g., God, evil, the Resurrection, the Bible), and each issue is subdivided into more specific questions or problems. In turn each question can, they say, be broken down into seven parts, though for the sake of readability they do not cover all seven for each question. The seven parts are as follows (20):

1. Definition of terms and the meaning of the question

2. The importance of the question, the difference it makes

3. Objections to the Christian answer to the question

4. Answers to each of these objections

5. Arguments for the Christian answer from premises accepted by the unbeliever as well as the believer

6. Objections to these arguments

7. Answers to each of these objections

The crux of this method is found in the fifth part, in which the apologist presents arguments for the Christian position “from premises accepted by the unbeliever as well as the believer.” The arguments thus function as proofs that should be acceptable to unbelievers if they are constructed properly and if the unbelievers reason properly. “The arguments in this book demonstrate that the essential Christian doctrines are true, unless they are bad arguments; that is, ambiguous, false or fallacious.” Not all the arguments have conclusive demonstrative force, though; some are “probable” and function more as “clues” that gain persuasive force when “considered cumulatively” (18).

Although for Kreeft apologetics at its core offers positive arguments as proofs (both demonstrable and probable) for the Christian position, most apologetic argumentation is taken up with answering objections to these proofs or other objections to the Christian faith (parts 3-4, 6-7 above). Following Aquinas, Kreeft is confident that “every possible argument against every Christian doctrine has a rational mistake in it somewhere, and therefore can be answered by reason alone” (39).

Kreeft’s approach is well illustrated by his handling of arguments for the existence of God. He admits that some people do not personally need proofs of God’s existence in order to believe in him, but he points out that the arguments can help others take belief in God seriously. Moreover, Kreeft and Tacelli acknowledge at the outset that their arguments for God’s existence differ in demonstrative power. For example, arguments from miracles or religious experience “claim only strong probability, not demonstrative certainty,” and were included “because they form part of a strong cumulative case.” They believe the arguments with the most demonstrative certainty are the cosmological arguments based on Aquinas’s “five ways,” but these proofs “are not the simplest of the arguments, and therefore are not the most convincing to most people” (49). In the end they offer twenty distinct arguments for God’s existence; while not depending too heavily on any one argument, the authors express confidence that “all twenty together, like twined rope, make a very strong case” (50). These references to a “cumulative case” in which multiple arguments work together “like twined rope” are actually more characteristic of the evidentialist approach to apologetics. This should not be surprising, since many apologists today freely utilize different sorts of arguments. Still, the overall approach that Kreeft and Tacelli take in their book follows the classical model: first argue for the theistic worldview, then argue more specifically for the truth of the Christian revelation.

While the rational structure of his apologetic is especially rooted in Thomistic philosophy, Kreeft is greatly indebted to C. S. Lewis for the practical expression of much of his approach.⁴³ Kreeft and Tacelli conclude their Handbook by reprinting the essay “Man or Rabbit?” which “we think is the most effective essay written by the most effective Christian apologist of our century, C. S. Lewis” (388).⁴⁴ Kreeft is perhaps best known for his books in which various characters, some fictional and some historical, engage in dialogue about ethical, philosophical, and religious questions. In one of these, Between Heaven and Hell, he imagines a discussion between C. S. Lewis, who represents Kreeft’s Christian position, and two men who happened to die on the same day as Lewis (22 November 1963)—John F. Kennedy, representing the modernist or humanist tradition, and Aldous Huxley, representing the mystical or pantheist tradition. Early in the dialogue Lewis and Kennedy discuss the grounds of Lewis’s faith in Christ:

Kennedy: If you want to be so logical, I challenge you: prove to me logically that Jesus is God and not just man.

Lewis: All right.

Kennedy: What?

Lewis: I just said, “All right.” Why the surprise?

Kennedy: I thought you were going to say something about mysteries and faith and authority and the church. Do you mean you are going to try to reason yourself into the old faith?

Lewis: Not myself; I’m already there. But you, perhaps.

Kennedy: Did you reason yourself into it? Did you arrive at your belief by reason alone?

Lewis: Reason alone? Of course not. But I looked before I leaped. I reasoned before I believed. And after I believed too—I mean, once I believed, I was convinced by the way reason backed up faith. It couldn’t prove everything, but it could give strong arguments for many things, and it could answer all objections.

Kennedy: All objections?

Lewis: Certainly.

Kennedy: That sounds pretty arrogant to me. Who are you to answer all objections?

Lewis: No, no, I don’t claim that I can answer all objections but that reason can—that all objections are answerable.

Kennedy: Why do you believe that?

Lewis: If truth is one, if God is the author of all truth, both the truth of reason and the truth of faith (I mean divine revelation), then there can never be a rational argument against faith that’s telling, that’s unanswerable. Faith may go beyond reason but it can never simply contradict reason.⁴⁵

William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig’s work has put him at the forefront of evangelical apologetics in the early twenty-first century. The scholarly depth and range of his work and his effectiveness as an apologist are very impressive. Most academics make their mark in only one field, and as specialization increases, that field tends to be ever narrower. Craig is one of the leading evangelical theorists in at least three areas of academic research. The first is the cosmological argument, an approach to proving God’s existence that Craig has developed along both philosophical and scientific lines, both with great sophistication.⁴⁶ Craig is also widely viewed as one of the leading evangelical scholars in the historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus, an extremely well plowed field that has produced new fruit through Craig’s efforts.⁴⁷ Yet a third area in which Craig is a leading evangelical researcher is the philosophical analysis of the attributes of God. Craig has given special attention to the doctrine of God’s omniscience, defending an orthodox (though frankly Arminian⁴⁸) theological understanding of this doctrine with a rigorous and fresh approach.⁴⁹ Craig has also published extensively on the question of God’s relation to time.⁵⁰

Besides writing both technical and popular books defending these three aspects of Christian faith, William Lane Craig has written one of the best recent textbook introductions to the subject of apologetics⁵¹ and co-authored a major textbook on Christian philosophy.⁵² In addition, he has publicly debated atheists and skeptics widely, with great success. Some of these debates have been published,⁵³ most notably his 1997 debate on the Resurrection with radical New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan⁵⁴ and his 1998 debate with renowned atheist philosopher Antony Flew.⁵⁵ Craig’s debate with Flew was held on the fiftieth anniversary of the famous 1948 BBC radio debate between Fredrick Copleston and Bertrand Russell. A few years later, in 2004, Flew abandoned atheism, announcing that he had concluded that some sort of God exists, although he still did not accept the Christian view of God.⁵⁶

In most of his earlier works Craig did not identify himself as an advocate of any particular apologetic methodology. However, in 2000 Craig defended the classical model in a book on different apologetic methods.⁵⁷ That he is a classical apologist may also be seen in his apologetics textbook and in some of his more wide-ranging debates, where he follows a fairly traditional, classical pattern. He opens by presenting arguments for the existence of God and follows these with arguments for the truth of Christianity (based mainly on the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection and deity). Still, some of Craig’s arguments have been extremely influential in evidentialist apologetics. Here we will present an overview of his textbook on apologetics, Reasonable Faith.

Craig begins by exploring the question, “How do I know Christianity is true?” According to Craig, the key to answering this question is “to distinguish between knowing Christianity to be true and showing Christianity to be true” (31).⁵⁸ “We know Christianity is true primarily by the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit. We show Christianity is true by demonstrating that it is systematically consistent” (48). In other words, Christian apologetics does not pretend to create the grounds for knowing that Christianity is true, but rather points to or presents Christianity as rational as a means of encouraging unbelievers to receive the witness of the Spirit.

Rather than launching immediately into arguments for God’s existence, Craig begins his apologetic by showing “the absurdity of life without God” (chapter 2). This argument is not intended to prove that Christianity is true, but to show “the disastrous consequences for human existence, society, and culture if Christianity should be false” (51). “If God does not exist, then life is futile. If the God of the Bible does exist, then life is meaningful. Only the second of these two alternatives enables us to live happily and consistently. Therefore, it seems to me that even if the evidence for these two options were absolutely equal, a rational person ought to choose biblical Christianity” (72).

Given that God’s existence would give meaning to life, we do not believe in God in an irrational attempt to convince ourselves that life has meaning. We believe in God because there is proof that he exists. “Thus, people are without excuse for not believing in God’s existence, not only because of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, but also because of the external witness of nature” (77). Arguments in support of belief in God “provide an intellectual, cultural context in which the gospel cannot be dismissed simply as a logical absurdity and is therefore given an honest chance to be heard” (78). Craig surveys the traditional arguments for God’s existence, including the ontological, cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, and finds “quite a number of the proffered theistic arguments to be sound and persuasive and together to constitute a powerful cumulative case for the existence of God” (91-92). Craig’s favorite theistic argument is the kalām cosmological argument, which was originally formulated by medieval Arabic Muslim philosophers. Craig concludes that, “amazing as it may seem, the most plausible answer to the question of why something exists rather than nothing is that God exists. This means, in turn, that the first and most fundamental condition for meaning to life and the universe is supplied” (121-122).

In chapter 4 Craig defends the possibility of miracles. He concludes that the philosophical objections from such thinkers as Spinoza and Hume are without merit. His final words on the subject indicate that for him the reasonableness of belief in miracles rests on the reasonableness of belief in God: “Once the non-Christian understands who God is, then the problem of miracles should cease to be a problem for him” (155). This line of reasoning is characteristic of the classical approach, which rests belief in the possibility of miracles on belief in God.

In chapter 5 he considers the question of the possibility of historical knowledge as a prelude to the examination of the historical claims of the New Testament concerning Jesus Christ. Here the major error to be combated is historical relativism, the belief that our distance from the past and our lack of neutrality or objectivity makes it impossible for us to know what actually occurred in the past (169-172). In answer to the objection that we lack direct access to the past, Craig argues that we may test theories about the past using the same criterion of systematic consistency that we use in other matters of truth. “The historian should accept the hypothesis that best explains all the evidence” (184). To the objection that objectivity in historical knowledge is impossible, Craig points out that our ability to distinguish history from propaganda and to criticize poor history reveals our ability to access genuine historical facts (185-187).

Craig L. Blomberg, an evangelical New Testament scholar, wrote chapter 6, on “the historical reliability of the New Testament,” to document that it is “probable that a substantial majority of the details in the gospels and Acts do describe what Jesus and the apostles actually said and did” (226). In chapter 7 William Lane Craig turns the discussion directly to Jesus’ claims about himself as reported in the Gospels. “At the center of any Christian apologetic must stand the person of Christ; and very important for the doctrine of Christ’s person are the personal claims of the historical Jesus” (233). Craig admits “that the majority of NT scholars today do not believe that the historical Jesus ever claimed to be the Son of God, Lord, and so forth” (243). But while Jesus’ use of these titles for himself is widely questioned, the self-understanding they express can be clearly traced back to Jesus himself in the rest of what he said about himself (244). Suppose we take only the sayings of Jesus admitted by the extremely liberal “Jesus Seminar” to be authentic. Even these sayings show Jesus as someone who “thought of himself as being the Son of God in a unique sense,” who “claimed to speak and act with divine authority” and to be “able to perform miracles,” and who “claimed to determine people’s eternal destiny before God” (244-252). Radical critics refuse to draw the obvious conclusion—that Jesus claimed to be God—not because of a lack of evidence but because of their prejudice against the Christian doctrine (253).

The importance of Jesus’ claims to deity is that they “provide the religio-historical context in which the resurrection becomes significant, as it confirms those claims” (253). This leads Craig to the capstone of his apologetic, the historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus (chapter 8).

The case for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus seems to me to rest upon the evidence for three great, independently established facts: the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith. If these three facts can be established and no plausible natural explanation can account for them, then one is justified in inferring Jesus’ resurrection as the most plausible explanation of the data. (272)

The structure of Craig’s apologetic closely parallels that of Norman Geisler, with some minor differences. Both begin by considering matters of epistemology and then move to defend the existence of God, primarily on the basis of a form of the cosmological argument. (Craig uses a version of the kalām argument originated by medieval Muslim philosophers, while Geisler uses a form of the cosmological argument dependent on the medieval Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas.) Having established the credibility of belief in God’s existence, both apologists argue for the possibility of miracles and then for the possibility of historical knowledge of such miracles. They then move to specifically Christian claims, making the case for the reliability of the New Testament, from there to Jesus’ claims to deity and the evidence for his resurrection, and conclude that Jesus’ resurrection confirms his claims to deity and therefore the truth of all that Jesus taught.

In the conclusion to his book, Craig presents “the ultimate apologetic,” which he says “will help you to win more persons to Christ than all the other arguments in your apologetic arsenal put together” (299). This ultimate apologetic is to show people our love for God and our love for one another (299-301). “This, then, is the ultimate apologetic. For the ultimate apologetic is: your life” (302).

Conclusion

Although the five apologists profiled in this chapter are all identified with the classical apologetical tradition pioneered by Thomas Aquinas, some distinct differences among them should not be overlooked. Norman Geisler is perhaps the most unremittingly rationalist of the five, by which we mean that deductive logic plays the most comprehensive role in his apologetic. Even Geisler, however, is not a thoroughgoing rationalist.

Peter Kreeft’s and William Lane Craig’s methods differ somewhat from that of Geisler. While upholding the rational ideal of deductive proof for theism, Kreeft and Craig also draw on a wide variety of arguments that fall short of deductive proof and employ them in defense both of theism and of Christianity per se in cumulative-case arguments. Thus these two apologists show some affinities for the evidentialist approach that defends theism using inductive, empirical evidences. What makes their method classical is that they follow the pattern of defending theism as a worldview within which the historical evidences for Christianity (miracles, fulfilled prophecy) are to be considered. In this respect, as we have just seen, Craig’s apologetic follows essentially the same structure as Geisler’s.

B. B. Warfield, writing at the beginning of the rise of the Reformed apologetic tradition, articulated a fairly traditional, classical apologetic. Yet Warfield, who was himself a Calvinist, anticipated in certain respects the Reformed apologetic of Cornelius Van Til. He regarded theistic arguments as reminders of the immediate awareness of recognition of God that all human beings have because of their creation in the image of God. His affirmation that the facts of Christianity are also Christian doctrines anticipated Van Til’s teaching that all facts are interpreted facts. Warfield’s apologetic also has affinities with the evidentialist approach, notably in his view that evidence for miracles could be in some sense part of the case for God’s existence.

Finally, C. S. Lewis’s apologetic, while broadly fitting the classical approach, also had affinities with other approaches. Lewis’s stock method was to argue first for God’s existence and then for Christianity, but in later years he often found it prudent to start immediately with the evidence for Christ’s deity. In this respect his later method was similar to that of evidentialism (although his reason for not arguing for theism first was that he found it largely unnecessary). Lewis also showed the sensitivity to personal, relational concerns that characterizes the fideist approach. For him apologetics was a function of the whole human person, dealing as much with the imagination as with the intellect, and ultimately was concerned with the personal reality of Christ himself.

In the following chapters, we will examine the classical approach in greater detail, drawing on the writings of these five classical apologists and other modern apologists who follow in that tradition.

For Further Study

Hackett, Stuart C. The Reconstruction of the Christian Revelation Claim: A Philosophical and Critical Apologetic. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984. An apologetics textbook by William Lane Craig’s philosophy professor at seminary, advocating a “rational empirical” theory of knowledge as the basis for a classical defense of Christianity.

Jones, Charles Andrews, III. “Charles Hodge, the Keeper of Orthodoxy: The Method, Purpose and Meaning of His Apologetic.” Ph.D. diss., Drew University, 1989. A dissertation on the apologetic of the premier systematic theologian of Old Princeton.

Moreland, J. P. Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987. An apologetics textbook taking an approach very similar to that of William Lane Craig—generally classical in structure with some evidentialist leanings in content.

Noll, Mark A., ed. The Princeton Theology, 1812-1921: Scripture, Science, and Theological Method from Archibald Alexander to Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983. A helpful collection of essays and excerpted writings from Old Princeton.

Sproul, R. C. Defending Your Faith: An Introduction to Apologetics. Wheaton, Ill.: Good News Publishers—Crossway Books, 2003. Recent text by a popular Reformed theologian and classical apologist in the tradition of Warfield. Sproul discusses the task of apologetics, delineates “four essential principles of knowledge” from which he will make his case (the law of noncontradiction, the law of causality, the reliability of sense perception, and the validity of analogical language for God), presents his argument for God from the existence of the universe, and finishes with the case for the authority of the Bible, relating it to both Jesus’ teaching and the testimony of the Holy Spirit.

¹ R. C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley, Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan—Academie, 1984), 210.

² Introductions to Warfield include Mark A. Noll, “B. B. Warfield,” in Handbook of Evangelical Theologians, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 26-39; Stanley W. Barnberg, “Our Image of Warfield Must Go,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 34 (1991): 229-41. Important works on Warfield, especially relevant to apologetics, include the following: William D. Livingstone, “The Princeton Apologetic as Exemplified by the Work of Benjamin B. Warfield and J. Gresham Machen: A Study in Modern American Theology, 1880-1930” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1948); Woodrow Behannon, “Benjamin B. Warfield’s Concept of Religious Authority” (Th.D. diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1964); John H. Gerstner, “Warfield’s Case for Biblical Inerrancy,” in God’s Inerrant Word: An International Symposium on the Trustworthiness of Scripture, ed. John Warwick Montgomery (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1974), 115-42; John E. Meeter and Roger Nicole, A Bibliography of Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1974); W. Andrew Hoffecker, Piety and the Princeton Theologians: Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, and Benjamin Warfield (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981); Mark A. Noll, ed., The Princeton Theology, 1812-1921: Scripture, Science, and Theological Method from Archibald Alexander to Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983); James Samuel McClanahan, Jr., “Benjamin B. Warfield: Historian of Doctrine in Defense of Orthodoxy, 1881-1921” (Ph.D. diss., Union Theological Seminary [Richmond], 1988); Kim Riddlebarger, “The Lion of Princeton: Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield on Apologetics, Theological Method and Polemics” (Ph.D. diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 1997); and Paul K. Helseth, “B. B. Warfield’s Apologetical Appeal to ‘Right Reason’: Evidence of a ‘Rather Bald Rationalism’?” Scottish Journal of Theology 16 (1998): 156-77.

³ Warfield’s most important writings can be found in two collections: The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, 10 vols. (reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), which are individually titled; and Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield, ed. John E. Meeter, 2 vols. (Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1970, 1973); hereafter cited as Shorter Writings.

⁴ Westminster Seminary’s apologetic changed directions from the Old Princeton approach under the leadership of Westminster’s professor of apologetics, Cornelius Van Til (see chapter 12).

⁵ Warfield, “Christianity and Our Times,” in Shorter Writings, 1:48-49.

⁶ Warfield, “Apologetics,” in Studies in Theology, 17-18.

⁷ See especially Warfield, Calvin and Augustine, ed. Samuel G. Craig (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1956).

⁸ Warfield, “Apologetics,” in Studies in Theology, 11.

⁹ Ibid., 13.

¹⁰ Archibald Alexander Hodge and Benjamin B. Warfield, “Inspiration,” Presbyterian Review 6 (April 1881): 227.

¹¹ Riddlebarger, “The Lion of Princeton,” 83-132, 268-332.

¹² Ibid., 83, 329-30.

¹³ Ibid., 101-105, 329 n. 212.

¹⁴ Ibid., 106-120.

¹⁵ Ibid., 108, quoting Warfield, “The Question of Miracles,” in Shorter Writings, 2:181.

¹⁶ Warfield, “Apologetics,” in Studies in Theology, 5.

¹⁷ Works about Lewis of most relevance to his apologetics include Richard B. Cunningham, C. S. Lewis: Defender of the Faith (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967); John Beversluis, C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), which is highly (and, most agree, unfairly) critical of Lewis; Richard L. Purtill, C. S. Lewis’s Case for the Christian Faith (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985); Andrew Walker and James Patrick, eds., A Christian for All Christians: Essays in Honor of C. S. Lewis (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990; Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway; Lanham, Md.: National Book Network, 1992); Colin Duriez, The C. S. Lewis Handbook (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994); Peter Kreeft, C. S. Lewis for the Third Millennium: Six Essays on “The Abolition of Man” (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994); John A. Sims, Missionaries to the Skeptics: Christian Apologists for the Twentieth Century: C. S. Lewis, E. J. Carnell, and Reinhold Niebuhr (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1995); Scott R. Burson and Jerry L. Walls, C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer: Lessons for a New Century from the Most Influential Apologists of Our Time (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1998); Victor Reppert, C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason (Downers Grove, Ill.: lnterVarsity, 2003); and Art Lindsley, C. S. Lewis’s Case for Christ: Insights from Reason, Imagination and Faith (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2005). For a stimulating perspective on Lewis that does not overtly support his position, see Armand M. Nicholi, The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life (New York: Free Press, 2002).

¹⁸ Lewis wrote voluminously, and many of his writings, while not expressly works of apologetics, had an apologetic function or relevance. His most important and directly apologetical works were Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1952); Miracles: A Preliminary Study, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1960); The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1962); Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967); and God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970).

¹⁹ On Lewis’s conversion, see especially David C. Downing, The Most Reluctant Convert: C. S. Lewis’s Journey to Faith (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2002). Even those well read in Lewis will learn much about the context of his thought from this insightful book.

²⁰ Lewis, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” in God in the Dock, 58.

²¹ Michael Maudlin, “1993 Christianity Today Book Awards,” Christianity Today, 5 April 1993, 28, cited in Burson and Walls, C. S. Lewis & Francis Schaeffer, 31.

²² Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1933; rev. ed., New York: Sheed & Ward, 1944).

²³ Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1955; New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1956).

²⁴ Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (New York: Macmillan, 1943); Perelandra (New York: Macmillan, 1944); That Hideous Strength (New York: Macmillan, 1946); The Chronicles of Narnia, 7 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1950-1956). Helpful studies of these books include David C. Downing, Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995); Kathryn Lindskoog, Journey into Narnia (Pasadena, Calif.: Hope Publishing, 1997); Peter Schakel, Reason and Imagination in C. S. Lewis: A Study in Till We Have Faces (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984).

²⁵ Letters of C. S. Lewis, ed. W. H. Lewis (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1966), 167, cited in Burson and Walls, C. S. Lewis & Francis Schaeffer, 166.

²⁶ C. S. Lewis, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to Be Said,” in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories, ed. Walter Hooper (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), 37; cf. Burson and Walls, 166.

²⁷ Burson and Walls, C. S. Lewis & Francis Schaeffer, 46.

²⁸ Lyle W. Dorsett, The Essential C. S. Lewis (New York: Collier, 1988), 3, cited in Burson and Walls, C. S. Lewis & Francis Schaeffer, 12-13.

²⁹ Time, 7 April 1980, 66, quoted in Purtill, C. S. Lewis’s Case for the Christian Faith, 1.

³⁰ Duncan Sprague, “The Unfundamental C. S. Lewis: Key Components of Lewis’s View of Scripture.” Mars Hill Review 2 (May 1995): 53-63, accessed online at < http://www.leaderu.com/marshill/mhr02/lewis1.html >.

³¹ Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, 42; David K. Clark, Dialogical Apologetics: A Person-Centered Approach to Christian Defense (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 108.

³² Lewis, “Christian Apologetics,” in God in the Dock, 92.

³³ The evidentialist John Warwick Montgomery, in some comments he made on the first edition of this book, describes Lewis as his “mentor” and expresses incredulity that “C. S. Lewis is put in the same bed with Norman Geisler” (“Editor’s Introduction,” Special Issue: John Warwick Montgomery’s Apologetic, Global Journal of Classical Theology 3, 1 [March 2002], online at < http://www.trinitysem.edu/journal/jwm_intro_v3n1.html >. Of course, there are significant differences between Lewis and Geisler (and no doubt significant similarities between Lewis and Montgomery). Yet the approaches of Lewis and Geisler are sufficiently alike (prove that God exists [if necessary], then present the evidence for Christ) that they may be placed in the same ‘family’ or basic type of apologetics.

³⁴ The most important books authored by Geisler alone that are of special importance to apologetics include Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976); The Roots of Evil (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978); Miracles and Modern Thought (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982); Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999); and Systematic Theology, Volume One: Introduction, Bible (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2002). Geisler has also co-authored numerous books, the most important of which for our purposes are Philosophy of Religion, 2d ed. with Winfried Corduan (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988); with William D. Watkins, Worlds Apart: A Handbook on World Views, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989); with Ronald M. Brooks, When Skeptics Ask: A Handbook of Christian Evidences (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor, 1990); and with Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Foreword by David Limbaugh (Wheaton, Ill.: Good News Publishers—Crossway Books, 2004). See also To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview: Essays in Honor of Norman L. Geisler, ed. Francis J. Beckwith, William Lane Craig, and J. P. Moreland (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004).

³⁵ In 2003, Geisler resigned his membership in ETS in protest of the society’s retaining Clark Pinnock as a member. According to Geisler, Pinnock’s view of Scripture is incompatible with biblical inerrancy as understood historically in the ETS.

³⁶ Very little has been written either positively or negatively about Geisler’s apologetics or his thought generally. One brief article critiquing Geisler’s apologetic method is Richard A. Purdy, “Norman Geisler’s Neo-Thomistic Apologetics,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 25 (1982). A more recent article that critiques the apologetic of Geisler and other classical apologists is Doug Erlandson, “The Resurrection of Thomism,” Antithesis 2, 3 (May/June 1991).

³⁷ This 12-point argument is prominently featured in Geisler and Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, and is also developed in a series available in video and audio formats entitled “12 Points that Show Christianity Is True” (http://www.impactapologetics.com/).

³⁸ All page references in this section are from Geisler and Corduan, Philosophy of Religion. Since the book was originally authored by Geisler alone, and since our focus here is on Geisler’s apologetic, in the text we refer to the book simply as Geisler’s.

³⁹ All references in this section are to Geisler, Christian Apologetics.

⁴⁰ Kreeft’s most important apologetics-oriented works include Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1982); Making Sense Out of Suffering (Ann Arbor: Servant, 1986); Socrates Meets Jesus (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1987; reprinted with new introduction, 2002); Fundamentals of the Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988); Yes or No? 2d ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1991); and with Ronald K. Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics: Hundreds of Answers to Crucial Questions (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1994). Note that Kreeft has books published by the evangelical Protestant firm InterVarsity Press, others by the Catholic firm Ignatius Press, and still others by the ecumenical firm Servant Books.

⁴¹ Peter Kreeft, ed., A Summa of the “Summa”: The Essential Philosophical Passages of St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa Theologica” Edited and Explained for Beginners (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990).

⁴² All parenthetical references in this section are to Kreeft and Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics.

⁴³ Kreeft’s interest in and affinity for Lewis is typified by his recent book, C. S. Lewis for the Third Millennium: Six Essays on “The Abolition of Man” (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994).

⁴⁴ The essay “Man or Rabbit?” (388-392) was taken from Lewis, God in the Dock, 108-113.

⁴⁵ Peter Kreeft, Between Heaven and Hell, 32-33.

⁴⁶ See Craig’s books The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe (San Bernardino, Calif.: Here’s Life, 1979); The Kalām Cosmological Argument, Library of Philosophy and Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1979); The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz (New York: Macmillan, 1980); and Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, Creation Out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic; Leicester, England: Apollos, 2004).

⁴⁷ See The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus During the Deist Controversy, Texts and Studies in Religion, vol. 23 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985); Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity, vol. 16 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989); Knowing the Truth about the Resurrection (Ann Arbor: Servant, 1991).

⁴⁸ Craig argues that God knows all things, including all future events, but in no sense predestines or predetermines the future. This is not a question that will be explored in this book. There are two notable introductions to the most prevalent views within evangelicalism: David Basinger and Randall Basinger, eds., Predestination and Free Will: Four Views, by John Feinberg, Norman Geisler, Bruce Reichenbach, and Clark Pinnock (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986); and another ‘Four Views’ book to which Craig contributed: James K. Beilby and Paul R. Eddy, eds., Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views, by Gregory A. Boyd, David Hunt, William Lane Craig, and Paul Helm (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2001).

⁴⁹ In addition to his contribution to Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views (see previous note), see Craig, Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom: The Coherence of Theism: Omniscience (Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1990); The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987); “Politically Incorrect Salvation,” in Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World, ed. Timothy R. Phillips and Dennis L. Ockholm (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1995), 75-97.

⁵⁰ See especially William Lane Craig, Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2001), and his contribution to God and Time: Essays on the Divine Nature, ed. Gregory E. Ganssle and David M. Woodruff (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

⁵¹ Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1994). This book is a revised version of Apologetics: An Introduction (Chicago: Moody, 1984).

⁵² J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2003).

⁵³ Craig also engaged an atheist philosopher in an extremely technical written debate on the cosmological argument: William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993).

⁵⁴ This debate was published with responses from four biblical scholars: Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan, moderated by William F. Buckley, Jr., ed. Paul Copan, with responses from Robert J. Miller, Craig L. Blomberg, Marcus Borg, and Ben Witherington III (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998). Crossan is a former co-chair of the ultraliberal “Jesus Seminar.” See also Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment? A Debate on the Resurrection between William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdemann, ed. Paul Copan and Ronald Tacelli (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2000).

⁵⁵ Does God Exist? The Craig—Flew Debate, ed. Stan W. Wallace (Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003). See also William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist, Point/Counterpoint Series, James P. Sterba, series ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

⁵⁶ “My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism: A Discussion between Antony Flew and Gary R. Habermas,” Philosophia Christi 6 (2004): 197-211.

⁵⁷ Craig, “Classical Apologetics,” in Five Views on Apologetics, ed. Steven B. Cowan, Counterpoint series (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 26-55; see our comments on this book in the Appendix.

⁵⁸ All parenthetical references in this section are from Craig’s Reasonable Faith.